Child poet Mattie Stepanek dies

Mattie Stepanek, a child poet whose inspirational verse made him a best-selling writer and a prominent muscular dystrophy advocate, died yesterday from complications of the disease. He was 13.

Mattie had dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy, a genetic disease that impaired almost all of his body's major functions.

His mother, Jeni, 44, has the adult-onset form of the disease, and his three older siblings died of it in early childhood.

Mattie began writing poetry at 3 to cope with the death of a brother. In 2001, a slim volume of his poems, Heartsongs, was published.

The book reached the top of the New York Times best-seller list. He wrote four more books.