Lynn Plourde

Lynn Plourde is the author of more than forty children’s books including her first book Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud as well as Wild Child, Moose, of Course!, At One in a Place Called Maine, Maxi’s Secrets, How to Talk Monster, Best Buddies, and many more. She does numerous in-person and virtual author visits at schools. Lynn grew up in Skowhegan, Maine, and currently lives in Winthrop with her husband.

Lynn Plourde is a will-never-live-anywhere-else Mainer. She was born on October 1, 1955 in Dexter, grew up in Skowhegan, and currently lives in Winthrop. She’s the second oldest of four (one older sister, two younger brothers). Lynn’s Mémère and Pépère (grandparents) lived across the street from her family, and so there were many multi-generational Franco-American family gatherings with card-playing, sing-a-longs, and storytelling.

Ever since she started kindergarten, Lynn loved school and always thought she would grow up to be a teacher. She played “school” for hours and always made sure she was the teacher—Barbie and Ken were very attentive students. In real school, Lynn always tried to be the teachers’ pet. She learned to read in kindergarten with “Dick & Jane” and then went on to read many series books, including the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew. Even though Lynn has written many picture books, she doesn’t remember reading them as a kid, just chapter books.

Lynn wasn’t very outdoorsy growing up and was known to crash her bike and scratch her feet before diving into the water—a nervous habit since she wasn’t a very good swimmer. In high school, Lynn participated in activities such as drama, speech, and majorettes.

Lynn went to the University of Maine where she also did drama and majorettes. She earned bachelor and master’s degrees in speech pathology and then worked for 21 years as a speech-language therapist in public schools. Her first published books were in that field, including the Classroom Listening and Speaking series.

When Lynn married her husband, Paul Knowles, in 1984, she got a ready-made family with her two “boys” (stepsons Lucas, 4, and Seth, 3). When she read books to the boys at bedtime, they’d fall asleep after a few books, but she continued reading stacks of picture books. That’s when she began to dream that maybe she could write picture books. And she did! But it took thirteen years of rejections of manuscript after manuscript before she got her first book published by Scholastic, Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud illustrated by John Schoenherr (of Owl Moon and Julie of the Wolves illustration fame).

Lynn and Paul had their daughter Kylee in 1986. And, so, with three kids in the house, there were plenty of adventures to use as ideas for stories. For example, Wild Child was inspired by the struggle of getting kids to bed, School Picture Day was the result of a challenging family photo, and more recently the Go, Grandma, Go! board book was inspired by keeping up with her energetic grandson, Beckett.

 

When writing books, Lynn enjoys new challenges which keep the job of being an author fresh and fascinating. She has written rhyming picture books, poetic stories, a fable, picture books with facts in the backmatter, a graphic novel, a biography, board books, and middle grade novels.

Lynn’s books often focus on family, school, the seasons, and Maine. She has a reputation for having a sense of humor in her books (i.e., the Mrs. Shepherd series that started with School Picture Day, The Blizzard Wizard, The Boy Whose Face Froze Like That), but also for sensitively dealing with the difficult topic of death (Thank You, Grandpa and Maxi’s Secrets).

Lynn’s experience working as a speech-language therapist and awareness of sounds inspired the use of wordplay in her books, including making up words (i.e., smuckery, whizzles, wucky, creating a Monster language in How to Talk Monster). Her work in special education also led her to create characters with special challenges, such as Best Buddies about a boy with Down syndrome and Maxi’s Secrets about a dog that is deaf.

With more than forty children’s books published, Lynn has received a number of awards for her books, including: Oppenheim, Amelia Bloomer List, Junior Library Guild, Children’s Literature Choice List, Growing Kids Classic Books, and Best of Book recognitions. In Maine, she has received Lupine Honor Awards and Maine Literary Awards. Her favorite awards are those voted on by children including the Golden Sower Award, Young Hoosier Award, and Maine Student Book Awards.

Now that Lynn is officially a senior citizen, her hobbies include going for walks, reading, and gardening. She also loves “staying young” by playing silly games and dress-up with her grandson. She still spends most of her time writing new books and doing author visits. She can’t imagine a time when she would ever stop writing.