Middle School
Worksheets
M.T. Anderson
Matthew Tobin Anderson is an award-winning author. Anderson, who is called Tobin by his friends, elected to use M.T. Anderson as the name for his published works. Anderson creates everything from picture books to young adult books. He is skilled at using humor and satire, and his books of terror and mystery have a dedicated following of readers.
M.T. Anderson was born in 1968 in Massachusetts. He had a happy childhood full of reading and writing. The first story Anderson recalls writing was a science fiction story from first or second grade. During his childhood, he also enjoyed reading. Anderson began reading books by Mark Twain when he was ten. He enjoyed Twain's use of satire, which encouraged him to read the works of other satirists and comic playwrights. During Anderson's teen years, he continued to expand his reading materials. He especially enjoyed literature from the early 1900s as well as detailed prose. Anderson also expanded his written works, writing stories, novels, and even comedies. One novel Anderson wrote during his teen years, after fifteen years and major revisions, became a successful published novel.
Before Anderson started college, he spent a year in England at a boarding school. Afterwards, he returned to the U.S. to attend Harvard University, but he dropped out for a while and worked in a department store. When Anderson later returned to college, he studied English literature at Cambridge University in England and received his BA. Years later, Anderson returned to college at Syracuse University where he earned an MFA in creative writing. After college, Anderson held a number of jobs: intern at the Boston Review, editorial assistant at Candlewick Press, classical music critic for The Improper Bostonian, and teacher at Vermont College. Anderson did his writing at night and on weekends. After several published works, he eventually became a full-time writer, focusing primarily on picture books for young children and novels for young adults.
