They had a son, Peter, when she was 20, and were divorced by the time she was 22. I always carried a notebook and wrote down ideas for stories and poems.” After high school, she briefly attended The University of New Mexico, where she fell in love and married her English professor at 19, after her first year of school. In her adolescent years, McGovern recalled, “I became a good listener because I still stuttered. From the time I was eight years old, I always felt better about myself after writing.” Of course I had feelings I wished to express, but since I couldn't talk about them, I began writing poems about my feelings and thoughts. “I stuttered a lot and never spoke in class. “Because of my stutter, I was given the part of a grandfather clock, shaking my head back and forth and making a tick-tock sound.”Īccording to her autobiography on, writing helped McGovern express what she struggled to say aloud: “My father died when I was five, and though I shared a room with my older sister, I often felt very alone and sad,” she said.

“Everyone had to be in the camp play,” McGovern wrote.

When they returned two years later, McGovern wrote that her mother “never smiled and hardly talked to us. I read books all the time to escape the loneliness I felt.” In school, McGovern said, “teachers never called on me because they saw how hard it was for me to speak.” Her stuttering proved difficult at summer camp as well. One of the reasons she loved to write, McGovern noted, was that it helped her deal with her stuttering.īorn in New York in 1930, McGovern had a tough childhood, exasperated by what The New York Times referred to as a “profound stutter.” Her father died when she was a young child, after which McGovern and her older sister were sent to live with their grandparents. Known for writing the beloved children’s book Stone Soup, Ann McGovern was a prolific author who wrote more than 50 books that have collectively sold millions of copies all over the world.

Stone soup book ann mcgovern