Theodore Taylor was born in North Carolina, and he thought of himself as strongly rooted in the “red clay” country by the Catawba River, even though he has worked and lived in many places throughout the world (Taylor). Growing up, his family was poor. He spent a bunch of time outdoors. Sometimes he went fishing with his father at the Hatteras Banks, a location that would eventually become the backdrop to his “Cape Hatteras Trilogy” of novels for young adults (Miller). Theodore also served during World War II. He first served as a cadet-AB seaman on a gasoline tanker, first of four merchant ships. He then became a naval officer in the Pacific Theater. A few months after the Korean War began; he was called to active duty.
Theodore began writing at the age of thirteen. His stories covered high school sports events for the Portsmouth Virginia Evening Star. He left home at seventeen to join the Washington, D.C. Daily News as a copyboy. He discovered the highly educational aspects of living on eleven dollars a week. By the age of nineteen, he was writing radio network sports for NBC, in New York. A year after his first book, The Magnificent Mitscher, Taylor joined Paramount Pictures as a press agent. He then became a story editor, and finally he became associate producer. He got to work with Raquel Welch, Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, and others, on seventeen major pictures (Taylor).
Upon getting up each morning, Theodore Taylor looked forward to going into his jumbled office and striking away at his old dinosaur of a typewriter. He would tell his family, “I want to die hunched over that typewriter, working away on a story.” He loved his readers and his fans. E...
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...ivilege to meet him and those who know him only through the words he wrote. His family takes great comfort in knowing that his legacy lives on in his works that will surely delight and entertain readers for years to come.
Theodore Taylor had come a long way from his hard scrabble roots in North Carolina. He would be the first to say that his eighty-five years on earth were as good as they come. His life’s adventures took him to wild and wooly places among them exotic lands, the high seas, World War II and Hollywood movie sets, boxing rings, and the press room of some of the world’s best newspapers. He collected scraps of stories and interesting characters along the way. His readers go on many of the adventures and meet memorable people and animals with him as they read his books. He often said “I don’t have much of an imagination,” but his family didn’t believe him.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd Ed. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.
Starting at a very early age, Theodore suffered from a severe case of asthma and had horrible eyesight throughout his whole life. He did a lot of physical activity and developed a very strong physique. Despite physical barriers, Theodore had a very strong outlook on life and was very strong physically and mentally. Theodore was also very intelligent and attended Harvard College and Columbia Law School. In 1881, Theodore was elected as a Republican of the New York State Assembly.
Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in New York City, to Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and Martha Roosevelt (Unites States. National Park Service. History: Theodore Roosevelt: Life). As a child, Teddy was burdened with an “acute” asthma, his eyesight was horrible, having to wear thick glasses his whole life, and his physical stature was small and frail (Teddy Roosevelt). His father advised Teddy to dedicate himself to physical fitness. Heeding his father's advice, Teddy soon began to develop a muscular frame and his asthma and frailness bothered him less and less (Teddy Roosevelt). “Teedie” was also a childhood nickname he had (Theodore Roosevelt Hi...
Taylor, Peter. The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
Born in Virginia, to mother Martha Puller and father Matthew Puller, he grew to become a well recognized marine globally (Russell & Cohn, 2012). His father’s dead while he was 10 years did not stop him to achieve a high point career; in fact, his childhood lifestyle of listening to war stories...
Although Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is primarily a children’s book, to older generations, it is reminiscent of childhood times. In fact, in the preface to the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain noted that “part of my plan [in writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]
Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th ed. Ed. Robert Atawan and Donald McQuade. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 73-76. Print
Zachary Taylor was born on November 24, 1784 near Gordonsville, Virginia. His parents, Richard and Mary Strother moved to Kentucky after she was born. Richard, his father served in the American Revolutionary War as a lieutenant colonel. As a third child out of nine, he spent his childhood in the frontier of Kentucky. They lived in a small cabin, but then moved to a brick house when they gained prosperity. His father owned 10,000 acres of land, and 26 slaves (Britannica 2013). Taylor’s family was rich in American history. He was a descendant of the colonist leader of the Plymouth Colony, William Brewster. Taylor’s second cousin is believed to be the fourth president, James Madison (Britannica 2013). As a child, Taylor received very little education as a child. There were no formal schools available in Kentucky. Taylor was homeschooled for only a couple of months (Britannica 2013).
Theodore had run for mayor of New York City and that’s when New York offered him the job of police commissioner. He had a hard time cleaning up the streets of New York. With all the gangsters and mobsters running around he had his hands full. I believe if he was alive today he would look back and say that being the police co...
Faulkner’s slow-paced, southern Mississippian upbringing was the most prominent influence of his writings. Growing up in the deep-south cannot compare to anywhere else on the planet and William Faulkner’s entire family heralded from Mississippi. His grandfather was a Civil War veteran and was known all throughout the state of Mississippi. Known as the “Old Colonel”, William’s grandfather was a successful railroad financer but also a best-selling writer of the time. His larger than life persona carried down through William’s father and then again onto William. Faulkner’s father founded the First National Bank of Oxford in 1910 and this business kept William living in Oxford until joining the Royal Air force of Canada (RAF). He originally attempted to serve in the U.S. Air force but was turned away due to height. After training in Toronto, William Faulkner returned to his hometown of Oxford with no combat experience. Despite true involvement in combat, Faulkner came home with many un-true and over exaggerated stories of his service in...
Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poems and morbid stories will be read by countless generations of people from many different countries, a fact which would have undoubtedly provided some source of comfort for this troubled, talented yet tormented man. His dark past continued to torture him until his own death. These torturous feelings were shown in many of his works. A tragic past, consisting of a lack of true parents and the death of his wife, made Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer he is today, but it also led to his demise and unpopularity.
Chris McCandless went into the adventure, not knowing what to do. He looked up his literary heroes for inspiration, and one that he mostly looked up to was Leo Tolstoy. He looked up to Leo because they both were accustomed to nearly the same way of life. For Example, “accustomed to calli...
After dropping out of school, Faulkner worked as a clerk in his grandfather’s bank and in his spare time wrote short stories and poetry and contributed drawings to the University of Mississippi’s yearbook (Locher). His talent was recognized early on by his good friend Phil Stone, Faulkner’s first literary mentor. Stone encouraged and instructed him in his interests and was a constant source of current books and magazines (Faulkner 699). After short stints in the Royal Canadian Air Force and then as a postal service employee, Faulkner, with Stone’s financial assistance, published The Marble Faun, a collection of his poetry. Sales were poor, however, and it was evident that Faulkner’s real talent was in writing fictional short stories and novels. His first novel, Soldier’s Pay, was published in 1926 and was an “impressive achievement…strongly evocative of the sense of alienation experienced by soldiers returning from World War I to a civilian world of which they seemed no longer a part” (Faulkner 699).
and Other Greats : Lessons from the All-star Writer's Workshop. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (or Mark Twain if one can correct) had dreams as a boy, just like any other young boy. After the death of his father, he set off to Hannibal, Missouri to work with his brother, Orion, for a newspaper called the Hannibal Gazette. He was only thirteen at the time. This, of course, was not his dream. Yet it’s how he began writing. He wrote short, funny stories about American tales in the newspapers he was obligated to publish. Clemens then became influenced by his own imagination to become a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river. He did become a pilot, and this gave rise to his story Life on the Mississippi. When the Civil War broke out in 1861 he was drafted as a Confederate soldier and served for two years. After the