Nancy Pearl was raised in
Detroit, Michigan and, by her own account, spent much time of her childhood at the public library. Her decision to become a librarian started at the age of 10 with the inspiration of the children's librarian at her local public library. She credits books and librarians with helping her through a difficult childhood: "It's not too much of an exaggeration—if it's one at all—to say that reading saved my life." She earned her
master's in
library science at the
University of Michigan (1967) and became a children's librarian in her hometown library system before moving on to other libraries. As a hobby, Pearl wrote poetry as a young woman and in 1980 published a story in
Redbook magazine called "The Ride to School." Pearl moved with her husband, professor Joe Pearl, from Detroit to
Oklahoma, where she raised two daughters (Eily Raman and Katie) while earning another master's degree, this one in history. She worked in an
independent bookstore, Yorktown Alley, as well as the
Tulsa City-County Library System. Craig Buthod, who worked with Pearl in Tulsa before he became the deputy director of the
Seattle Public Library, recruited her to come to Seattle in 1993. She originally traveled to Seattle without her husband for four years, until he reached retirement age and joined her. Pearl said the decision to join the library was one of the few times in her life when she instinctively knew she was doing the right thing. Pearl appeared regularly on
KUOW public radio to review and recommend books. While there she first came up with her "Rule of 50" to read a book's first 50 pages before deciding if you were interested enough to finish it or uninterested enough to quit. She later became the executive director of the library system's Washington Center for the Book. ==Writing career==