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Margaret Cecile (Peggy) Parish was born on July 14, 1927 in South Carolina. After graduating from the University of South Carolina with a degree in English, she taught school in Texas, Kentucky, and in New York at the Dalton School for a number of years.
Her most loved series of books, Amelia Bedelia, were written because Ms. Parish was amused by how literally her students often answered her questions. She wrote many Amelia Bedelia books and did some interesting research for them. For example, when she wrote that Amelia Bedelia baked a sponge cake, Ms. Parish felt she had to know what would actually happen if someone baked a sponge—so she did. (It stayed spongy.) She moved back to South Carolina, writing thirty books, of which twelve were about Amelia Bedelia. Although Peggy Parish died in 1988, many of her books are still in print.