Teaching American History with Favorite Folk Songs

Tracey West grew up in a small town in New Jersey. After high school, West attended Rutgers University and studied English and Journalism. She worked on the college newspaper and as a reporter before graduating and getting a job as an editorial assistant at a small publishing company. From there West moved to a company that packaged children's books and sold them to other publishers. She started submitting ideas for books that other writers would then turn into stories. Finally, she wrote her first book, a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermystery called Spies and Lies. At the same time, she and two friends came up with an idea for a children's book called Great Uncle Dracula. They wrote the book under the pseudonym Jayne Harvey. West then went to work for Scholastic, and when she left in 1996, she decided to try writing books full time. In 1997 she started Pure West Productions and began writing, editing, and packaging books and magazines. Although writing Pokémon kept her busy, Scholastic picked up her original series, Pixie Tricks. She went on to write eight books in the Pixie Tricks series and continued to write new stories for the popular Pixie Tricks website, www.pixietricks.com. In August 2003, Grosset & Dunlap published West's new series, Scream Shop, a Pick Your Path series that lets readers choose what will happen in the story. West also writes many books based on cartoon characters such as Samurai Jack, SpongeBob Squarepants, the Looney Tunes, the Powerpuff Girls, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptors, Cubix, and Scooby Doo.