Michael L. Cooper
"Cooper has a straightforward, empathetic style that seems ideal for young readers.” Washington Post Book World.WHERE I CAME FROM
I grew up in the small town of Williamsburg on the banks of the Cumberland River in southeast Kentucky. Everything about Williamsburg was small. We had three stop lights (In the 40 years I've been gone the town has added three more.). The town's school was one big brick school building for all 12 grades. The school had a large front lawn shaded by tall oaks and enclosed by a hedge. We weren't allowed to play on the lawn. A few kids rode the school bus, but most of us walked to and from school. Unless we stopped to shoot some hoops or watch a freight train loaded with coal rumble through the middle of town, we could walk to school from anywhere in town in less than 30 minutes. As I said, it was a small town. The house where I grew up sat on five acres of fields about 100 yards from the Cumberland River. On the other side of the river and all around the town were mountains, part of the long Appalachian chain that stretches from Maine to Alabama. Some of my earliest memories are of summers fishing and swimming and playing in the willows that grew beside the river. I often played by myself down by the river and the books I was reading--Light in the Forest, The Adventures of Daniel Boone, The Last of the Mohicans--informed my imaginary world. This was, after all, Daniel Boone country. Boone and many other settlers passed through the Cumberland Gap, which was just a few miles to the east of my little town. When I read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, my imaginary play moved to one of the river's easy-to-reach islands, where I built a lean-to under the big maples. And I found several logs which had washed ashore during the spring floods and nailed boards across them to make a raft. Using a pole, I pushed my raft a ways up river and then let it drift back down while I stretched out on my back and gazed at the clouds and dreamed of the future. I had turned 11 that summer of the raft. The following summer I visited the island where my lean-to had been. The spring floods had taken it away. But my raft had been washed up on the river bank. I stared at it for a long moment and then turned and walked away. COMING TO NEW YORK With little money and no job skills I moved to New York City in the summer of 1977. It was a dumb thing to do, but that's where I became a writer. (to be continued . . . )  Photo by Sam Luna. RECENT BOOKS Up Close: Theodore Roosevelt (Viking, 2009) Hero of the High Seas: John Paul Jones and the American Revolution (National Geographic Books, 2007) Jamestown 1607 (Holiday House Books, 2007)  Photo by Laurel Fuson Upcoming Books National Geographic will publish DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES in 2010. This nonfiction book is about the trial in 1850 of Professor John Webster who was convicted of murdering Dr. George Parkman in Boston, MA. It was the first criminal trial in the United States where the prosecution relied extensively on forensic evidence to win a conviction.  "a vivid account of their heroic combat experiences . . . well organized . . . Cooper's awareness of the power of understatement permeates the book, rendering the facts all the more powerful." Horn Book |
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