Mindy McGinnis

McGinnis grew up on an Ohio farm and worked for years as a school librarian, which is where the willingness to hand teenagers difficult books comes from. Not a Drop to Drink is about a girl guarding a pond with a rifle in a country that has run out of water. The Female of the Species is about a girl whose sister was killed and who has worked out that she is capable of doing the same thing, and it is used in classrooms and challenged in about equal measure. She writes across genres and refuses to soften an ending.