She was a steady writer and come out with around two books every year. She wrote The Galloping Goat and Other Stories, which came out in 1965 and was her first children’s book. She was originally going to study psychology and get her Master’s but then chose to become an author on a full time basis. Before that in 1960 she got married to speech pathologist Rex Naylor. She studied at American University and graduated with her BA degree in 1963. Phyllis would later move to Maryland and settle down there for some time.
Her spouse would be diagnosed later as having paranoid schizophrenia and they would eventually divorce. She would write and work different jobs to help support them, working as an editorial assistant, assistant executive secretary, and teacher. Later she would notice that her husband was displaying signs of mental illness, so she decided to try and go get him treatment. There she worked at a university hospital as a clinical secretary. She got married when she was just 18 and they decided to move to Chicago.
She attended Joliet Township High School and graduated, and attended and graduated from Joliet Junior College. She chose to keep submitting to youthful magazines like Jack and Jill and Seventeen, getting rejection letters in the mail for two years. Her favorite book when she was younger was Huckleberry Finn. The church had asked her to write it and paid her $4.67 for writing her short story “Mike’s Hero”. When she was sixteen years old, the first story she ever wrote found a place in print published in the church magazine locally. She would go home from school every day as quickly as she could to try and jot down the plot that she had been thinking about. When Phyllis was in the fifth grade, her favorite thing to do was write books. Her mother would read to the kids and their father would also. However, she never felt that they were poor due to the fact that the family had quality books. Naylor also grew up during the Great Depression and like many families, hers did not have much money at the time. Her father worked as a salesman and so the family moved around during her childhood a lot. She grew up in a family that was very religious and had conservative values. She was born on Januin Anderson, Indiana.
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