About The Author

Ann Matthews Martin (born August 12, 1955) is an American children’s author most well known for writing The Baby-Sitters Club series.
Ann Matthews Martin grew up in Princeton, New Jersey with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. Her father was the cartoonist Henry Martin.[citation needed] Martin developed an interest in writing from an early age. Before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.
After graduating from Smith College, Martin became a teacher and then an editor of children’s books. She is now a full-time writer.

Martin finds the ideas for her books from many different sources; some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are about contemporary problems or events. All of her characters, including the members of The Baby-Sitters Club, are fictional, but many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes she names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.

After Martin wrote the first 35 novels in The Baby-Sitters Club series she has since concentrated on writing single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s. One of those novels, A Corner of the Universe, won a Newbery Honor in 2003. In 2010, Martin published a prequel to The Baby-Sitters Club series titled The Summer Before.

In 1990, Martin and her colleagues founded “The Lisa Libraries” to honor and memorialize their friend Lisa Novak. This non-profit organization distributes new books to children and establishes libraries in under-served areas