Jessie Haas
Award-winning Children's Author
 THE FACTS Born 7/ Parents Bob and Pat Haas 1 brother, Jim 1 sister, Martha (both younger) 1st horse Scamper 2nd horse Josey--lived to age 34 3rd horse Atherton, a black Morgan attended Westminster Center School Bellows Falls Middle School Bellows Falls High School Wellesley College sold first book, April 1981 married, April 1981 graduated, May, 1981 First book, KEEPING BARNEY number of books 28 current pets 1 cat, Shad (tiger) 1 dog, Arrow (Aussie) hobbies: knitting cooking reading husband Michael J. Daley Michael's books AT HOME WITH THE SUN NUCLEAR POWER, PROMISE OR PERIL AMAZING SUN FUN SPACE STATION RAT SHANGHAIED TO THE MOON COMPLETE WORKS Keeping Barney Working Trot The Sixth Sense Skipping School Chipmunk! Beware the Mare Mowing Safe Horse, Safe Rider A Horse Like Barney A Blue For Beware No Foal Yet Uncle Daney's Way Be Well, Beware Sugaring Clean House Busybody Brandy Fire! Westminster West Hurry! Unbroken Will You, Won't You Runaway Radish Appaloosa Zebra Shaper Birthday Pony Scamper & the Horse Show Jigsaw Pony Chase |
Biography I was born in Westminster, Vermont, and have lived there most of my life. I grew up on a small farm, with cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, a lot of cats and dogs, and a younger brother and sister. We got our first horse, Scamper, when I was six. I was born loving horses. Dad read Walter Farley's LITTLE BLACK, A PONY, every night until we both knew it by heart. Later I read every single horse book in all the libraries we went to, and then re-read them, and re-read them. (Try something else! Mom said, so I read the dog books, and the westerns because they took place on horseback, and then I read the horse books again.) In fifth grade a teacher had our class write poems about anything we wanted to--a big change in our old-fashioned school. I wrote horse poems, and found out that writing is just as much fun as reading. From then on both were my refuge. I read through math class and middle school, and wrote through high school for a wonderful teacher and friend, Linda Felch. I went to Wellesley College. My friends spent junior year at co-ed colleges. I had a boyfriend already, so I took a semester off, worked in a motel laundry, and wrote a story which became my first book, KEEPING BARNEY. It was, what else, a horse story, and I got The Call from the legendary Susan Hirschman of Greenwillow Books, at the front desk of my Wellesley dorm. After college I married the boyfriend, Michael J. Daley, someone I'd known since high school. Soon after we built a tiny house in the woods, without benefit of any building experience. It was one-room, 12 feet by 16, the size of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond. Twentythree years later that house is still standing and sheltering us--a little expanded, but not much. It's powered by solar panels and still has outdoor plumbing (you can get used to almost anything, including an outhouse at twenty below, and it's amazing how much self-control it teaches!) I had a lot to learn about writing, and following a quick couple of books I wrote many unpublishable manuscripts. It wasn't until I joined an SCBWI critique group around 1990, and at the same time lost my 20-hour-a week job, that I began publishing regularly. Around then I learned to write picture books, and the younger novels that have become one of my own special forms; the BEWARE books, and later the pony books that began with RUNAWAY RADISH. I also wrote a book of nonfiction, SAFE HORSE, SAFE RIDER, about how to handle and keep horses so you don't hurt them and they don't hurt you. The young novels have ushered many children into the world of reading; SAFE HORSE has possibly saved a number of lives; and I don't know which I'm proudest of. I love to work in many different forms. HOOFPRINTS; HORSE POEMS, is a history of the world in poetry. I started to write a straight, nonfiction history of horses, and got bored filling in the tedious millenia. I wanted to react, I discovered, jump around--and I did, and it was more fun than anything else I've ever done. I've written several historical novels, including UNBROKEN and CHASE. I've written a horse alphabet, and a picture book about our white horse, Scamper, and I've written a series of picture books about farming, the Gramp and Nora books. I love the act of writing, I've learned to love rewriting, and I adore getting that first copy of a new book in the mail. But what I love best is knowing that out there in the world, kids are finding my books and curling up in private with them, having their own experience of them, and making of it whatever they will. The evidence of that is when I go to a library and see a beat-up, much-read copy of one of my books. I'll probably never meet the kids who read it, but I know it changed them somehow, as the books I've read changed me. That's why I do my best, every single time--because books matter. |
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