Sixth Grade
Worksheets
Alex Flinn
American author Alex Flinn was born and spent part of her childhood in a small town on Long Island, New York. She began writing at an early age. Flinn said, "When I was five years old, my mom said that I should be an author. I guess I must have nodded or something because, from that point on, every poem I ever wrote in school was submitted to Highlights or Cricket magazine." She received her first rejection slip at the early age of eight.
Flinn was an avid early reader. However, she had conflicts with her school's selected reading materials. As a child, little Alexandra disliked reading from workbooks and then answering questions. According to Flinn , "When the other kids were on Book 20, I was on Book 1." It wasn't Flinn's inability to read the selected material; it was her disinterest in the school district's decision regarding the grade level reading material. It was Flinn's teacher, Mrs. Zeiser, who said that "Alexandra marches to her own drummer." As a child, Flinn preferred reading such authors as Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Astrid Lindgren, Marilyn Sachs, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess was an especially favorite book of hers.
After spending her elementary years in New York, Flinn's family moved to Miami when she entered middle school. Making friends was a challenge for Flinn, so this move was especially hard on her. Instead of trying to make new friends, she spent her time alone reading and writing. It was this time in her life that would later be her inspiration for Breaking Point, a book about a good kid who goes bad in order to be liked by the popular group. Luckily, by high school, Flinn had made some friends and had even expanded her interests to the performing arts.
After graduating from high school, Flinn took her interests in the performing arts to college. She studied opera while in college and sang as a coloratura, a very high range soprano voice. Following college graduation, Flinn moved on to law school and interned with the State Attorney's Office. She also volunteered at a battered women's shelter. This experience was her inspiration for another future book, Breathing Underwater, a book about dating violence.
After the completion of law school, Flinn practiced law for a number of years. During this time in her life, she met and later married a fellow attorney. It was while she was on pregnancy leave that she decided to leave her law practice and devote herself full time to writing.
