About this item
"Cathleen Young's characters will forever have a place in my heart." --Holly Goldberg Sloan, author of Counting by 7sFormer best friends compete to see who can grow the biggest pumpkin and win the annual giant pumpkin race on the lake. A great pick for fans of Half a Chance and Gertie's Leap to Greatness.At the end of every summer, Madeline Island hosts its famous pumpkin race. All summer, adults and kids across the island grow giant, thousand-pound pumpkins, then hollow one out and paddle in it across the lake to the cheers of the entire town. Twelve-year-old Billie loves to win; she has a bulletin board overflowing with first-prize ribbons. Her best friend Sam doesn't care much about winning, or at least Billie didn't think so until last summer's race, when his pumpkin crashed into hers as she was about to cross the finish line and he won.
About the Author
Like Billie in her book The Pumpkin War, Cathleen grew up among storytellers. She often went fishing all around the Badger State with her father, who was a newspaper reporter. Ever since she was little, Cathleen's dream was to write for kids. After graduating from the University of Georgia, Cathleen began writing for magazines like McCall's and Working Mother. Later, she worked as a police reporter at CITY NEWS BUREAU in Chicago. She then moved into television, writing everything from soap operas like The Young and the Restless to shows like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and MacGyver.She has over a dozen television movies to her credit, including the award-winning HALLMARK HALL OF FAME movie, A Place for Annie. Cathleen is now the executive director of HUMANITAS, where she gets to help aspiring writers break into film and tv. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her twin daughters, Shaelee and Gemma, her husband Patrick, and the family dogs Butch and Rexxy.It was only after her twins were born that Cathleen discovered her true writer's voice.
