1941 Move to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
1945 World War II ends.
1946 Raymond, Mary, and four younger children leave Winston-Salem in order to return to China and are stopped at the last minute. Live for a few months in Montreat, North Carolina, and then move to Richmond, Virginia, until the fall of 1948, when they move to Charles Town, West Virginia. My parents and Helen and Anne move to Winchester, Virginia, in 1950 when there is no hope of returning to China. I go off to King College in Bristol, Tennessee and graduate in 1954.
1954–1955 I teach sixth grade in Lovettsville, Virginia, a community that is the model for Lark Creek in Bridge to Terabithia.
1955–1957 I attend my mother’s alma mater, the General Assembly’s Training School for Lay Workers in Richmond, Virginia (now a part of Union Presbyterian Seminary), where one of my professors suggests I become a writer. I don’t—at least not until she gets me a job writing church school curriculum several years later.
1957–1961 I work in Japan under the Presbyterian Church US Board of World Missions.
1961–1962 I attend Union Seminary in New York City, meet John Paterson, and get married.
1963–1964 I teach at the Pennington School while John is at Princeton Seminary.
June 1964 John Jr. is born. That December Lin arrives from Hong Kong, and I begin to write seriously. In 1966 David is born and in 1968 Mary arrives from the White Mountain Apache reservation.
1966 We move to Takoma Park, Maryland, and Who Am I? written for fifth- and sixth-grade Presbyterians is published.
1973 My first novel, The Sign of the Chrysanthemum, is published.
1974 I discover I have cancer, Lisa Hill dies, Of Nightingales That Weep is published.
1975 We are temporary foster parents.
1976 The Master Puppeteer is published.
1977 It wins the National Book Award, and Bridge to Terabithia is published.
1978 It wins the Newbery, and The Great Gilly Hopkins is published.
1979 It is the Newbery Honor book and wins the National Book Award. We move to Norfolk, Virginia, and my mother dies. Angels and Other Strangers is published.
1980 Jacob Have I Loved is published.
1981 It wins the Newbery, and Gates of Excellence and The Crane Wife are published.
1983 My father dies, and Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom is published.
1985 Come Sing, Jimmy Jo is published.
1986 Consider the Lilies, John’s and my first collaboration, is published, and we move to Barre, Vermont.
1987 The Tongue-Cut Sparrow is published.
1988 Park’s Quest is published.
1989 The Spying Heart is published.
1990 The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks is published and wins the Boston Globe–Horn Book picture book award. The play, Bridge to Terabithia, by Paterson, Stephanie Tolan, and Steve Liebman premieres at Stage One, Louisville, Kentucky. Our first grandchild, Katherine Elizabeth Pierce, is born.
1991 Both Lyddie and my first I-Can-Read, The Smallest Cow in the World, are published, and I am now officially a “Vermont Author.”
1992 The King’s Equal is published, and Who Am I? is revised and republished.
1994 Flip-Flop Girl is published, and Of Nightingales That Weep wins the Phoenix Award for a book published twenty years before that never won a major award.
1995 Jip, His Story, A Midnight Clear, and the combined essay books in A Sense of Wonder are published.
1996 The Angel and the Donkey is published.
1997 The Field of the Dogs and Marvin’s Best Christmas Present Ever are published.
1998 Images of God (with John Paterson), Celia and the Sweet, Sweet Water, and Parzival are published, and John and I go to India, where I receive the Hans Christian Andersen Medal from the International Books for Young People.
1999 Preacher’s Boy is published.
2000 The Wide-Awake Princess is published. Along with more than 70 others from politics, sports, architecture, and all the arts from music to children’s literature, Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Maurice Sendack, and I are named “Living Legends” at the 200th birthday celebration of the Library of Congress. I go back to my home town of Huai’an, China, and have a reunion with the 1954–55 sixth grade of Lovettsville Elementary School.
2001 The Invisible Child and Marvin One-Too-Many are published.
2002 The Same Stuff as Stars is published.
2004 Blueberries for the Queen (with John Paterson) is published.
2006 Bread and Roses, Too is published, and our entire family of seventeen plus David’s mother-in-law and Virginia and David Buckley travel to Stockholm, where I receive the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
2007 Almost the entire family goes to Hollywood for the premiere of the movie Bridge to Terabithia that David helped write and produce. I receive the NSK Neustadt Award.
2008 The Light of the World is published.
2009 The Day of the Pelican is published and is the Vermont Reads book for the year.
2010 & 2011 I serve as Second National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
2011 Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a reimagining of St. Francis’s great hymn, is published and with John Paterson a free adaptation of The Flint Heart, Eden Phillpotts’ 1910 fairy tale.
2013 I receive the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association. Giving Thanks, a second book with artist Pamela Dalton, and A Stubborn Sweetness, a new collection of Christmas stories combining stories from the previous two collections with some new material, are published. John Paterson Sr. dies on September 30.
Stories of My Life Page 22