Author peggy parish biography

American writer

Margaret Cecile "Peggy" Parish (July 14, 1927 – November 19, 1988) was an American writer known best for the children's book series and fictional character Amelia Bedelia.

Parish was born in Manning, South Carolina, attended the University of South Carolina, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.^[1] She worked as a teacher in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and in New York. She taught at the Dalton School in Manhattan for 15 years and published her first children's book while teaching third grade there.^[2] She authored over 30 books, which had sold 7 million copies at the time of her death.^[2]

Parish's most well-known character, Amelia Bedelia, is extremely literal minded and interprets idioms and other verbal expressions literally, which amusingly causes great havoc in each story.

This idea originated in conversations between Parish and Greenwillow Books founder Susan Hirschman about the author's observations of he