About The Author

Phyllis Anderson Wood, winner of the Church and Synagogue Library Association’s award for “significant contribution to children’s literature,” is the author of thirteen young adult novels, which have been popular since 1971 in schools and libraries throughout the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand.

Three of the titles were Junior Literary Guild selections. Now these books are back in print for a new generation of young readers. They are still timely because they focus on the universal issues of growing up–the hopes and worries, the awakening interest in the opposite sex, stresses within the family, responsibilities, friendships, peer interaction, and personal problem solving.

These novels were written during Mrs. Wood’s years of teaching in the Jefferson High School District just outside of San Francisco. Her students’ daily lives and problems were reflected in her stories, and their reactions to her books strongly influenced the course of her writing. Her goal in both teaching and writing was to bring reading success to her students so they would be confident in using the basic tool of lifelong learning.

Altogether, Mrs. Wood taught for thirty years in California public schools, including a two-room mountain high school, an inner-city junior high, a continuation school, adult school, and several large rural and suburban high schools. Over the years, she also supervised and mentored thirteen teaching interns from the Stanford University School of Education.

Mrs. Wood has conducted in-service education workshops throughout the United States and Canada, and has spoken at many national conferences, including those of the American Library Association, International Reading Association, National Council of Teachers of English, and Catholic Library Association.

Mrs. Wood grew up in San Francisco, earned her AB at the University of California at Berkeley, her MA with a specialty in the Teaching of Reading at San Francisco State University, and took a further year of graduate work in Speech and Drama at Stanford University. She also earned the California Language Development Specialist Certificate, which added the specialty of Teaching English-as-a-Second Language.

Mrs. Wood and her husband, Roger Holmes Wood, lived for sixty years on the San Francisco Peninsula. They moved to Southern Oregon at the end of 2007 to be near their daughter, Elizabeth, and their only grandchildren, Sarah and Caleb. (Mrs. Wood considered grandparenting to be the very best of her several careers.) Mr. Wood died in Oregon in 2008 after a long illness. The Woods’ eldest son, Stephen, was one week away from joining them in Oregon when he died of a massive heart attack. Their other son, David, and his wife, Sharon, live in California’s Marin County. Mrs. Wood enjoyed the last years of her life in Southern Oregon with her California cat, Hazy Dazy, who became a totally contented Oregon resident. Mrs. Wood died in July of 2011 at the age of 87. Between 2006 – 2011 she had updated and republished eight of her books through AuthorHouse.