M.A. Larson

M.A. Larson is a noteworthy author and screenwriter from America, who is known for writing children’s books, young adult, and fantasy novels. He was born as Mitchell Aaron Larson in Rochester, Minnesota, on August 5, 1976. Later in his life, he shifted to New York, followed by Los Angeles. The reason behind Larson’s multiple shift of residence was to try and establish himself as a screenwriter. Author Larson has worked for a few animated series, which include Gravity Falls, My Gym Partner is a Monkey, Littlest Pet Shop, as well as his most popular work, My Little Pony : Friendship is Magic. He was interested in working in the latter after working for a previous assignment with the show’s original showrunner named Lauren Faust. Larson has said that he was too surprised by the characterization of the primary characters by Faust and this inspired him to begin writing for this show. Later, author Larson went on to become a famous figure within the teenage and adult fan-base of the show, known as ‘bronies’. This helped him to receive invitations of several conventions. As a novelist, Larson is particularly popular for writing the Pennyroyal Academy series. Its first book, titled as Pennyroyal Academy, was released by Putnam in 2014. Author Larson says that he was influenced by the ‘princess fatigue’ in the well known culture at the time when he was working for Cartoon Network. He was so much brainstormed by it that he considered creating a children’s work comprising of many princesses, who would live together in one place and have to deal with the idea of residing with each other. The original title given to the story by author Larson was Princess Boot Camp. Even the princess characters were shown as undergoing difficult military like training in a boot camp. While author Larson was developing the story, he came across the Bruno Bettelheim’s Uses of Enchantment. In this, Bruno had analyzed several popular works such as Grim’s Fairy Tales with the use of Freudian psychology and had come up with the conclusion that the dark elements in such stories help in the development of emotions in children.