Who Is Andrea Warren?

I grew up in the little town of Newman Grove, Nebraska, with my parents, two brothers, two sisters, and our dog, Pepper. I always loved to read and write, and decided I would become an English teacher. I graduated from the University of Nebraska with a master's degree in British Literature. While teaching high school English and history in Hastings, Nebraska, I wrote my first stories for publication.

Later I moved to Lawrence, Kansas, to complete a master's degree in magazine journalism at the University of Kansas.

After briefly editing a magazine and working as a newspaper reporter. I began my career as a freelance writer,contributing to many major magazines. I also began writing books. In 1996, Houghton Mifflin published my first nonfiction book for young readers, Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story .

I was encouraged by the success of this book to follow it with other books for young readers. They currently include Pioneer Girl: Growing Up on the Prairie ; Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps; and We Rode the Orphan Trains, a companion to my first orphan train book. My newest book is Escape From Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy.