On a corner shelf in the cozy Overhill Road home of Kate Hamill, a handful of books in a neat little stack sit apart from all the other books in the room.

They aren't the works of famous authors from the British Literature courses Hamill teaches at Catonsville High School.

But a children's picture book, a pair of children's novels, two books of poetry and an anthology of nonfiction stories constitute what Hamill jokingly refers to as "the family shrine."

They were all written -- or edited, in the case of the non-fiction stories -- by Hamill's daughter, Laurel Snyder.

Their special treatment is just one sign of the pride Hamill has in her daughter, which she freely shares.

"As somebody who teaches writing and literature, it's the proudest I could be to have a writer daughter who publishes books," Hamill said on a recent afternoon.

"She was reciting poetry at the age of 2. It's always been in her."

Snyder, a 1992 graduate of Catonsville High School, smiled sheepishly from a nearby couch as her mother spoke, her legs tucked beneath her.

A mother herself, Snyder was in town visiting from her home in Atlanta last week with her two sons, Mose Poma, 3, and Lewis Poma, 2, who were playing in the next room.

Her husband, Chris Poma, who does marketing for Philips Electronics, did not make the trip.

When she talks about her own work -- which is full of illustrations and children having magical adventures -- Snyder, 35, shies away from the pride her mother shows, and instead mixes humility with self-deprecation and humor.

She downplays the impressiveness of the fact that since 2005, she has published a half dozen titles, with another picture book due out next fall and another children's novel due out next spring.

She is modest about the successes of her 2008 children's novel Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, which was named a Smithsonian Notable Book last year, and her 2009 children's novel Any Which Wall, which was recently named a Junior Library Guild Selection.

In Snyder's mind, she is not some hotshot author, but is "still 15 sitting in Gary Blankenburg's class, hoping he likes the new poem," she said, referring to the former Catonsville High creative writing teacher who inspired her -- and many others -- to go into writing.

In a way, she still is the angst-ridden teenager she describes, who wore all black, got into trouble and hung out at the local 7-Eleven. The sarcasm and youthful energy are still there, even if the clothes are different.

Snyder grew up in Govans and moved to Overhill Road in seventh grade with her mother and younger siblings -- Henry, three years younger, and Emma, six years younger -- after her parents divorced.

After a year and a half at Catonsville Middle School, she went to Catonsville High and discovered her voice as a poet under Blankenburg's guidance, she said.

Blankenburg gave her "the permission to take myself seriously," she said.

He encouraged her, from his large leather seat at the front of the classroom, to deal with the emotions she felt.

In Blankenburg's classes, one of which Snyder took each year of high school, she thrived, she said.

Her senior year, Blankenburg used his connections at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to get her a scholarship there, where she continued studying poetry, she said.

After college, she attended the University of Iowa's prestigious Writers' Workshop for graduate school.

There her poems were critiqued in all-day roundtable discussions by other writers, including "22-year-old hotshots right out of Harvard," she said.

"It was like going through a ringer," she said of the program, the oldest of its kind in the country.

After the workshop, she moved to Atlanta with her husband and worked for Hillel, a Jewish community organization.

She didn't write for more than a year.

When she finally did start writing again, her work took the form of "Daphne & Jim: A choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse," which she published in 2005 through a small publishing house called Burnside Review Press.

She then edited an anthology of stories about half-Jewish families -- inspired by her work at Hillel -- called "Half-Life: Jewish tales from Interfaith Homes," which was published by Soft Skull Press in 2006.

She also published a book of poetry, called "The Myth of the Simple Machines," through another small press in 2007.

Back in the writing game, Snyder began "playing around with language" and found herself working on "Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains," a fairy-tale-like children's novel.

As the book took form, Snyder said she simply began e-mailing the manuscript to publishers.

"I broke every rule in the book," she said, noting she had no agent and no references.

"I basically just e-mailed them cold."

She eventually heard back from someone at Random House who liked the book. She hired an agent and never looked back.

Today, Snyder's books -- including the 2008 picture book "Inside the Slidy Diner" -- can be found all over, from bookstores to the Baltimore County Public Library.

According to Lila Wisotzki, coordinator of collection development for the Baltimore County Public Library, the county's library system has 11 copies of "Up and Down the Scratchy Mountain, "10 copies of "Any Which Wall," and two copies of "Half-Life."

Snyder said she is "so grateful" for her success, which has made it possible for her to afford more daycare for her sons, meaning more time to write.

She is in the process of writing a more introspective book about a girl who grows up in the Baltimore area, a place she wants to move back to, she said.

Snyder said she doesn't know how to view her overall success as an author, and considers her role as a mother and a "writer" as being far more important than her role as an "author."

Still, she thinks "children's literature is the most important literature in the world," she said, and is happy to be able to write it.

For information about Snyder's work, go to http://laurelsnyder.com.

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