Meet Our Mid-Valley: Silverton author Bart King has reached a generation of kids

The 31 or so books Bart King has written have sold more than a million copies.

The most rewarding part of being an author, however, is when the Silverton resident goes to a library and sees one of the books that clearly has been read a lot of times.

“Especially if see I kid carrying a book, or if I see a book of mine that is just thrashed, it is beat within an inch of its life … seeing ones that have been around the block is really gratifying,” King said.

“In my mind a dozen, two dozen readers have read just that one copy.”

His latest book, "Time Travel Inn 2" — the newest book in the Choose Your Own Adventure series — was released in early October.

Primarily writing books for young adults, he’s combined his first profession as a middle school teacher with being an author to help bring reading to a generation of kids, many of whom were reluctant readers.

A background in education

King, 61, was born in Los Angeles and spent much of his youth in Sebastopol, California. Both of his parents were educators, but King says he wasn’t great at school.

While his siblings were excelling at sports, King was spending all of the money he made picking apples at orchards on books and magazine subscriptions.

After high school, he attended the California Maritime Academy, San Diego State and Humboldt State. He eventually graduated with degrees in English and Creative Writing and with a Master’s in history.

“I did get a lot out of my education at different places, but in the end it was like, 'OK, I’ll be a teacher just like my dad,'” King said. “How imaginative was that?”

King started out teaching in California in 1990. In his first seven years as a teacher, he taught at seven different schools as a result of budget cuts and financial difficulties in the districts.

He taught subjects such as language arts, social studies and debate at middle schools.

“This is still in an age when the copy room is a happening place,” King said.

King and wife, Lynn, moved to Portland in 1995.

He realized that when he was giving writing assignments to his students in class and would go back to his desk, he was sitting around. So he started using that time to write, too.

That led to pieces being published for places including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

How Bart King became an author

After moving to Portland, he wanted to find an architectural history guide to the city, but there wasn’t one. Thus, "An Architectural Guidebook to Portland" was born.

“This is like the cliché,” King said. “I was looking for a book and I ended up writing it. It sounds horrible, but it was like that.”

He changed his focus to writing books for the age of students he had been teaching and his writing career took off.

King’s first big hit was “The Big Book of Boy Stuff,” a humorous take on teaching boys things such as how to make armpit noises.

A slew of books for the young adult demographic audience followed including "The Big Book of Gross Stuff," "Book of Fun" and "Big Book of Girl Stuff."

Pretty soon, he was making enough by writing books that he could take time away from his job as a teacher starting in 2006.

“It kind of went back to that I can teach anywhere, basically,” King said. “I can teach any time, too, within reason. But right now I can do this. And this is different. This isn’t something I was planning on.”

He hasn't gone back.

For the next 15 years, King wrote books like "The Drake Equation," "Bad Dad Jokes" and "Time Travel Inn," and in his free time he worked as a freelance writer and took on other part-time jobs from time to time like working at Powell’s Books.

Coming to Silverton, finally

King and his wife, Lynn, first looked at Silverton in the early 2000s when they went to his sister’s wedding at Silver Falls State Park. They looked at it much harder in 2020.

Silverton ticked all of the boxes, including having an independent book store and a library. When King went into the Silver Falls library to have a look around, he bumped into someone he knew.

“One of the librarians is the daughter of one of the school librarians who I worked with in Portland,” King said.

That pretty much cinched it. King and Lynn moved to Silverton in 2021.

He’s worked for Gibbs Smith Education for the past couple of years as an educational book editor for his day job while still writing books.

There are still more books on the way.

He’s been writing books long enough that some of his early ones are being read by the children of people who read them when they first came out.

King recently found that out when a father took one of his books on a camping trip to read to his son. There was something that went too far through the lens of history.

“I guess I went a little far with that,” King said.

That’s an occupational hazard for someone whose books are going to be read for generations to come.

Reach reporter Bill Poehler at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: How Oregon author Bart King has reached a generation of kids