Emily Arnold McCully Books In Order

Publication Order of Grandma Books

Publication Order of Mirette Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Children's Books

Emily Arnold McCully is an American illustrator and children’s fiction author best known for “Mirette on the High Wire” a US picture book illustration she wrote in 1993. McCully is a native of Galesburg, Illinois, though she spent much of her childhood in the New York suburb of Garden City. She comes from a creative family as her father wrote for radio shows and her mother was a singer and actress. It was her mother that inspired the creative streak in her even as she was a child. Emily has asserted that it was her mother who recognized that she was trying to draw objects and audiences and encouraged her as she developed her art. She believes that her talent in drawing could someday open the doors for a professional career that would support her. She went to college at Brown University, then Pembroke College but instead of studying drawing she was drawn towards art history, reading, and theater. She said that at the time she was fed up with the weirdness that was constant in the life of an artist. For years, people had stood around her as he drew, marveling at how well she reproduced something or someone. As such, she decided to venture into something that she had never tried before just to be normal.

Emily McCully wrote a lot as a child as she started making little books full of stories as soon as she started to read. She also loved and followed comic strips and read a lot of the newspapers from New York City that came with the strips. She would also make up a lot on her own and as such used illustrations as a way of telling her stories right from the very beginning. As for inspiration, there were several books that she loved during this time but her favorite was “Freddy the Detective.” She also loved classics such as “Winnie the Pooh” and “Alice in Wonderland.” These books serve as an inspiration and she still enjoys them whenever she has the time. She had always loved to write and draw but she preferred the idea of being an illustrator rather than a painter since she believed it would be easier to make money as the former.

Once she graduated from college, she found it hard getting a job and ended up working for an advertising agency as a quasi-secretary. She later went back to college and earned her masters in art history from Columbia. When she realized that promotions were hard to come by, she decided to do something with her illustration talent. She compiled a portfolio of drawings and submitted it to several art directors and this led to several book cover jobs. Not long afterward, she got the huge break she needed when an editor for children’s fiction works saw a poster she did for the New York Subway. He contacted her and asked if she would be willing to provide some illustrations for a story he had. She had been making illustrations for stories for years but she never thought of doing it professionally. She had also taken an illustration course while at the Rhode Island School of Design but never thought much of it until then. She got her first assignment and built from that and become one of the most renowned illustrators in children’s fiction. She then pivoted to writing fiction starting with the publishing of the “O’Henry Collection” of short stories. This was followed by two novels and it as not long before she was writing children’s fiction and reunited her two loves – painting and writing.

Emily Arnold McCully’s A Promising Life is the story of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau who has believed for the longest time that a bright future awaited him. After all the great Sacagawea who had accompanied Clark and Lewis on the discovery expeditions was his mother. Given his mother’s connections, his life is changed for good when he is invited to St Louis by none other than Captain Clark. His mother encouraged him to glean everything he could by writing, reading mathematics, and languages. His life is soon a whirlwind of elections, dances, duels, and lessons as he undertakes journeys to far off destinations and makes friends and enemies. But he is also witness to the injustices that are visited on the Mandan, Arikara, and Osage Indian tribes by none other than his patron Captain Clark who works for the government as Indian Affairs agent. He has also seen the effect of what some may refer to as development on the Indian tribes. He needs to decide on what path to take given that the society he is living in is in a constant state of flux.

Emily Arnold McCully’s “The Secret Cave” is an intriguing story of Jacques Marshal. The boy was intrigued by the prehistoric tools and bones he had been shown in class. He had been amazed by the Font de Gaume cave paintings and as such when he and three other students find the cave, they are determined to do some exploration. On their hands and knees, they follow a tunnel into the cave that goes deep into the earth. The paintings on the walls of the cave look exactly like they did in the class paintings. After several days of exploring the cave and finding a lot of intriguing paintings, Jacques insists on showing the paintings to their teacher. He is skeptical at first until he sees the many paintings and takes some of them to an expert who pronounces them authentic. It is a beautiful semi-fictional story of the discovery of the treasures of Lascaux.

“Beautiful Warrior” by Emily Arnold McCully is an intriguing story of two Chinese girls whose lives at first glance do not seem to be connected in any way. But then they get interested in Kung Fu as a way of finding their way on life. Young Mingyo was being forced to get married to Soong Ling, a real jerk and bandit to save her family’s business. She is looking for a way out and turns to a local nun named Wu Mei to teach her martial arts as a way of dealing with her predicament. Wu Mei advises her to postpone the nuptials and tell Ling that she will only marry him if he can beat her in Kung Fu. She thinks it is a brilliant plan and is soon immersed in the world of Kung Fu and so begins a journey that will change her destiny.