Author Biography

       Mary Pope Osborne was born on May 20th, 1949. She grew up traveling around the world because her father was a colonel in the military (Osborne, 2012). Moving was never very traumatic for Osborne because she loved the adventure that moving brought. After her father retired she had trouble finding the adventure she was craving. It didn't take long before Osborne was able to satisfy this craving at her local community theater in North Carolina.                                                                   Osborne studied Drama at UNC-Chapel Hill. During her junior year, she switched her major to Religion to learn about different cultures and continue her quest for adventure (Osborne, 2012). After college, Osborne continued her pursuit of adventure by living a wild life in the early 70's. She camped out in a cave in Crete for some time, then traveled via caravan through sixteen Asian countries. When she was finally done exploring the world, Osborne made her way back to the United States, but only to hold a myriad of jobs. It was one night in Washington, D.C. that Osborne met her biggest adventure yet, her husband, Will Osborne. He was playing the lead role in the Jesse James musical opening night. After one year, the two were married in New York City. Again, Osborne was back to working a myriad of jobs, only now with a husband. 

         One of her jobs was working for as an assistant editor for a children's magazine. Then one day, Osborne began to write:

 I began writing a story about an eleven-year-old girl in the South. The girl was a lot like me, and many of the incidents in the story were similar to happenings in my childhood. The first draft was crudely written, but must have communicated something to an editor, because shortly after I finished, it became a young adult novel called Run, Run as Fast as You Can. Finally I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. (Osborne, 2012).

        Mary Pope Osborne has written books, biographies, mysteries, novels, retellings of Greek mythology, Norse mythology, medieval stories, mermaid tales, and American tall tales (Osborne, 2012). While she has written over a hundred books over the past thirty years, Osborne's favorite books to write are her Magic Tree House series. There are forty-five historical fiction books in total. Her husband and sister write a series of non-fiction companion books that go along with the series.