Pat R. Scales in director of library services at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts. She spent 28 years as a middle school librarian and has taught children's literature at Furman University since 1976. She received ALA's Grolier Foundation Award in 1997, and was honored with the AASL/SIRS Intellectual Freedom Award in 1983. She more recently was named one of the five most influential librarians in the 20th century in South Carolina. Scales served as chair of the 1992 Newbery Award Committee and of the 2001 Laura Ingalls Wilder Committee. She writes teacher's guides for children's and young adult novels and is a regular contributor to Book Links.