I was born in Abilene, Texas. My father, Burt Stanley, was a navy pilot, one of the World War II flying aces and a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor, but was at sea on the aircraft carrier Lexington when the Naval Base was bombed. My mother, Fay Grissom Stanley, witnessed the attack. When all the non-combatants were evacuated from the island, she stayed on by joining the Women's Air Raid Defense.

Not long after I was born, my parents divorced. Mother, a big-city gal at heart, picked up and moved us to New York City. There we lived in a brownstone in the West Village which later served as the setting for mother's first mystery novel, Murder Leaves a Ring, published in 1950. The book was dedicated to me. Years later, I dedicated my first work as an author, The Conversation Club, to mother. And some years after that we did a book together, The Last Princess (Fay wrote it, I illustrated it), which we dedicated to one another.

All this mother-daughter writing and dedicating speaks to the enormous part that Fay played in my life, and especially in my development as a writer and illustrator. She was a serious lifetime reader, a true lover of words and art. She was also a witty and flamboyant woman with a love of adventure and a broad view of the world. Like all the Grissoms (especially my grandmother Pearl and my aunt Nancy), Fay loved to travel, the more exotic and challenging the destination, the better. An interest in the art and culture of other peoples and places was part of my family legacy.

When I was about nine years old, mother came down with tuberculosis and had to be hospitalized. So for several years I lived in Abilene with my aunt and uncle, Nancy and Hal Sayles, and my two cousins, Martha and Jim (whom I regard as my honorary sister and brother). Once Fay had recovered, we moved to La Jolla, California where we lived until my junior year in high school. La Jolla was a nice place to grow up, with long walks on the beach with my toy poodle, Poochie (short for Puccini Barculus Ferocious Atrocious Gregarious Stanley I), and weekend hikes in the hills.

Fay became ill again, so I finished high school in Abilene, then went on to Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I chose an interdepartmental major in the social sciences (history, political science, and sociology) for the simple reason that I couldn't make up my mind. I wanted to major in everything. This should have told me that I was a generalist, not a specialist, and that I ought to look for a career that combined a variety of talents and interests – such as writing and illustrating children's books about history, for example.