SOURCE CITATION
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Scholastic Inc.

"Sidelights"
Debbie Dadey has written scores of popular and compelling novels for younger readers which blend tongue-in-cheek horror with fast-paced storytelling skills. Working with Marcia Thornton Jones on such popular series as the "Adventures of the Bailey School Kids," the "Bailey City Monsters," "Triplet Trouble," and "Barkley's School for Dogs," Dadey has attracted legions of young readers to a jaunty world of gremlins, wizards, pirates, and aliens. Dadey's solo efforts have also produced the "Marty" series and the "Bobby" series for younger readers, as well as humorous stand-alone titles such as King of the Kooties and My Mom the Frog. Other of Dadey's solo books, such as Cherokee Sister and Whistler's Hollow, are for somewhat older readers and of a more serious nature.

"I have always been a daydreamer, sometimes to my teachers' chagrin," Debbie Dadey once commented. "I think anyone who can dream can write. All it takes is the desire and the dream." Dadey began achieving her dream, with the help of Marcia Thornton Jones, when Dadey was working as a librarian at an elementary school where Jones was a teacher. "It was one of those days when the kids didn't seem to be paying attention to anything we had to say," Dadey once recalled. "We decided if we grew horns, sprouted fangs, had steam rolling out of our ears, and were fifteen feet tall the kids in our school would really pay attention to us. That's the reason we wrote Vampires Don't Wear Polka Dots. It's a story about a tough group of third graders who get an even tougher teacher [Mrs. Jeepers] . . . she might even be a monster or vampire!"

The success of their first book encouraged Dadey and Jones to continue collaborating, work which was done largely during lunch in their school cafeteria. Memories of summer camp inspired the pair's next book, Werewolves Don't Go to Summer Camp. "We had been to short little camps as kids," Dadey once remarked, but the book expanded on their rather ordinary experiences to focus on a week-long camp where the counselor is rumored to be a real werewolf. Despite the fun of writing books with werewolves and vampires as characters, Dadey and Jones once noted that their favorite book so far is Santa Claus Doesn't Mop Floors because of its insight into the character of Eddie, whom they describe as a "stinker." The book shows how Eddie discovers "that miracles really can happen," Dadey said.

Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball is a story which pits a vampire and a leprechaun against one another right in the middle of an elementary school. "It was interesting because of the research we did into leprechauns and vampires," the authors once remarked. "If we write about a certain creature, we always read as much as we can about it. We come up with some interesting tid-bits and try to include them in our stories." While writing Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips, the pair "read so many ghost books we had to check under our beds before we went to sleep at night!"

In the forty-fourth book in the series, Ghosts Don't Ride Wild Horses, the kids from Bailey School are on a trip to a ghost town. This school outing turns dangerous when the ghost of a cowboy picks on redheaded Eddie, whom the ghost sees as the incarnation of Blackheart Eddie who stole his gold. In the 2001 title Swamp Monsters Don't Chase Wild Turkeys, Melody, Liza, Eddie, and Howie once again find something strange going on at their school. The ecology project coordinator, claiming to be from Australia, actually turns out to be a swamp monster, and the kids at Bailey School are the only thing that can save the town from his evil intentions.

So popular was the "Adventures of the Bailey School Kids" that Dadey and Jones branched out into companion series. The "Bailey City Monsters" series features Ben and his sister, who are sure that their new neighbors, the Hauntlys, are actually as creepy as their name implies. They strive through the volumes in this series to prove that the Hauntlys are in fact monsters and that their hotel, the Hauntly Manor Inn, is a hotel for monsters. "Triplet Trouble" is a series geared for slightly younger readers, featuring the mischief that the Tucker triplets make in the classroom. These adventures do not include monsters as in the "Bailey School Kids." Dadey and Jones have also teamed up on "Barkley's School for Dogs," twelve titles strong and growing.

Dadey, who eventually left teaching to write full time, no longer collaborates with Jones over the lunch table, but by e-mail and fax, as they live in different states now. They take turns writing chapters of their fast-selling books, employing what they refer to as the "hot potato" method of writing. Beginning with research on various topics, they then move on to an outline, and then one collaborator begins writing a chapter, forwarding this portion to the other, who then takes the "hot potato" and continues the tale.

In addition to these collaborative efforts, Dadey has also carved out a successful writing career on her own, penning several novels and picture books. Dadey's first solo effort, Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express, is a short fictional account of that legend of the Wild West and of the opening of travel and communication routes. Dadey continued to write about Western themes with her picture book Shooting Star: Annie Oakley, the Legend, a tall tale about the famous sharp-shooter. In this "spirited yarn," as a contributor for Publishers Weekly described the book, Oakley not only outshoots the Grand Duke of Russia and shoots candles out with her bullets, but she also manages to shoot craters in the moon and to take the points of celestial stars. Ilene Cooper noted in a Booklist review of Shooting Star that Dadey mixes fact and fantasy in this book with a "sassy" tone. Shirley Wilton, writing in School Library Journal, felt that this is a "great book for reading aloud or for introducing children to a colorful historical figure."

For Will Rogers: Larger than Life, Dadey again teamed up with the same artist who illustrated Shooting Star, Scott Goto, to present an account of the laconic lasso artist who became one of the most beloved humorists of his day. Dadey once more blends fact and tall tale in this recounting of Rogers's life, spinning "historical straw into tall-tale gold for a memorable introduction to an American humorist," according to Booklist's John Peters. Dadey's account has Rogers roping a horse at five years of age and proceeding to plow three hundred acres with his feet, and when he lassos the Earth, the backlash sends him sailing to Mars.

Dadey has also crafted juvenile novels that are full of the same sort of fun and irreverent humor that she serves up in her series work with Jones. Her books about Marty, Marty the Maniac, Marty the Mud Wrestler, and Marty the Millionaire, as well as her "Bobby" books, Bobby and the Great, Green Booger and Bobby and the Big Blue Bulldog, are easy readers for primary grades, as is My Mom the Frog. In that book, young Jason discovers a wart on his hand. His mother, being supportive, promises to buy some medicine for it, and meanwhile gives it a kiss to make it better. The next day, Jason discovers that his mom is missing. When his sister tells him about the old wives' tale that you will turn into a frog if you touch a wart, Jason is soon convinced that his mother has been turned into the frog that he finds on the kitchen floor next to his mother's purse.

King of the Kooties is a humorous tale about bullying, which is "a topic of concern to elementary school children," as Carolyn Phelan noted in Booklist. Nate has a new friend, Donald, who has just become his neighbor and will be in his fourth grade class this year. However, they will have to share their class with Louisa, a bully who loves to tease and ridicule. Her newest target, it seems, is Donald, whom she calls the Kootie King. The two friends try a number of defenses to ward off her attacks, including a bribe of cookies, but they finally decide that their best tactic would be to create a good offense. They decide to set up the Kingdom of the Kooties and to establish Louisa as its first princess. A contributor for Kirkus Reviews noted that this exploration of "one approach to the age-old problem of bullies" is "never didactic."

More serious in tone are Cherokee Sister and Whistler's Hollow. The former title, set in 1838, is full of "vivid descriptions. . . [which] transport readers back to the 1830s," Sarah O'Neal wrote in School Library Journal. Twelve-year-old Allie's best friend is Leaf, a young Cherokee girl. One Sunday, Allie slips away from church and goes to visit Leaf, where, with her tanned skin and Leaf's buckskin dress, she blends in very well--so well, in fact, that the soldiers who have been sent to remove the Cherokee from their land mistake Allie for one and send her off to a relocation camp for the Trail of Tears. "Cherokee Sister took me eight years to write," Dadey told Julia Durango in By the Book. "It was an education for me because I did a lot of research and rewrote the story so many times. Of course, in that same time period I also did five series."

Adapting a tale from her own grandmother, Dadey follows the trials of a young girl who becomes orphaned after World War I in Whistler's Hollow. When her mother dies, eleven-year-old Lillie Mae is sent to the Kentucky farm of a great uncle and aunt by another greedy aunt. These nurturing older relatives raised Lillie Mae's father, now missing in the first World War. The young girl hopes against hope that her father will return to claim her, but meanwhile she finds that something is terribly wrong at the farm. There is a terrible smell emanating from the attic, and mysterious sounds come at night. Although her neighbor, Paul, knows the source of the smells and sounds--her great-uncle has a still set up in the attic--Paul convinces her that the house is haunted. To further make Lillie Mae's life miserable, Paul turns the other children at school against her. While a reviewer for Publishers Weekly complained that Dadey's "heavy-handed revelations and forced dialogue exacerbate the feel of melodrama" in this novel, a contributor for Kirkus Reviews praised Dadey's ability to paint her characters in a "few short strokes." The same critic further noted that readers will have "no problem identifying with [Lillie Mae's] most universal desire . . . to be connected to people she can love and be loved in return."

Responding to a question from Durango as to whether she had run out of ideas after so many books, Dadey replied, "I have lots of ideas, after all they are all around me." Dadey further noted, "My problem is having enough time to write all the ideas that come to me."

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Family: Last name is pronounced "Day-dee"; full name, Debra Sue Gibson Dadey; born May 18, 1959, in Morganfield, KY; daughter of Voline (a model maker) and Rebecca (a teacher; maiden name, Bailey) Gibson; married Eric Dadey (a chemist), June 11, 1981; children: Nathan, Becky, Alex. Education: Western Kentucky University, B.S., M.S.L.S. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Catholic. Avocational Interests: Hiking, biking, making crafts, scrapbooking, and playing with her children. Memberships: International Reading Association (Bluegrass Chapter vice president), Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, National Education Association, Kentucky Education Association, Fayette County Education Association. Addresses: Home: Fort Collins, CO. Agent: Susan Cohen, Writer's House, 21 West 26th St., New York, NY 10010.

AWARDS
Best Children's Books of the Year citation, Bank Street College, 2000, and master list, Kentucky Bluegrass Award, 2001-2002, both for Cherokee Sister; Elba Award, for Wizards Don't Need Computers; Children's Choice Award, for Vampires Don't Wear Polka Dots; Milner Award, 2002, for body of work.

CAREER
St. Romuald Elementary School, Hardinsburg, KY, teacher, 1981-83; St. Leo Elementary School, Versailles, KY, teacher, 1983-84; Sayre School, Lexington, KY, began as teacher, became librarian, 1986-90; Tates Creek Elementary School, Lexington, KY, librarian, 1990-92. Freelance writer, Argus Communications, 1989; instructor, University of Kentucky, 1990-92, and Southern Methodist University, 1995-97; writing consultant, Scott County Schools, 1991-92; contributing editor, Writer's Digest, 1998-2002.