Joan Bauer (novelist)

Last updated
Joan Bauer
BornJuly 12, 1951 (1951-07-12) (age 72)
River Forest, Illinois, U.S.
OccupationAuthor of young adult fiction
NationalityAmerican
SpouseEvan Bauer
Children1

Joan Baehler Bauer (born July 12, 1951) is an American writer of young adult literature currently residing with her husband Evan Bauer in Brooklyn. Bauer was born in River Forest, Illinois.[ citation needed ] They are the parents of one daughter, Jean.[ citation needed ] Before becoming a famous author Joan spent years working for McGraw-Hill and the Chicago Tribune. She also did some work in advertising, marketing, and screenwriting.[ citation needed ]

Contents

Themes

The main characters in her books are typically teenagers who are dealing with complicated family issues, such as alcoholism, abandonment, illness, and self-esteem issues. These issues are lightened up with a light touch and humor. Bauer is well known for her enjoyable young adult fiction novels, which always feature bright covers with her name in mismatched colored letters.

Awards

She has received multiple awards and recognition for her work including: Delacorte Prize for First Young Adult Novel, 1992, for Squashed; Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults selection, American Library Association, 1999, for Rules of the Road; Newbery Honor Medal; Los Angeles Times Book Prize; [1] Christopher Award; Golden Kite Award, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators; Michigan Thumbs-Up! Award for Children's Literature; New England Booksellers Award; Literary Light Award, Boston Public Library.[ citation needed ]

Notable works

Squashed

Bauer's first book, Squashed, was set in rural Iowa. The novel features a sixteen-year-old named Ellie Morgan, whose life "would be almost perfect if she could just get her potentially prize-winning pumpkin to put on about 200 more pounds—and if she could take off 20 herself ... in hopes of attracting Wes, the new boy in town." [2] The novel was published in 1992 by Delacorte Press, a Dell Publishing imprint. According to Delacorte, Squashed won its annual Prize for an Outstanding First Young Adult Novel.

Hope Was Here

The novel Hope Was Here was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2000. The novel was one of four Newbery Honor Books, and runner-up for the 2001 Newbery Medal. [3] The American Library Association award recognizes the year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature; a distinct award for young-adult books had been introduced in 2000, the Michael L. Printz Award. Hope Was Here features Hope Yancey, a 16-year-old waitress in small-town Wisconsin. According to the Newbery Committee chair, "Bauer juggles story lines as well as Hope juggles plates, and the lessons of waitressing expand into lessons about the essentials of life." [3]

Thwonk

Thwonk was published in 1996 by Bantam books. The novel features A.J. McCreary and her love interest Peter Terris. She encounters a real-life cupid who can only help her in one aspect of her life: either romantically, academically, or artistically. She knows she should use the wish to get into a prestigious art school but she has been obsessed with Peter for months which complicates her situation. [4] [ unreliable source? ]

Peeled

Peeled was published in 2008 by Putnam Juvenile. The novel follows Hildy Biddle. She dreams of being a journalist. She writes for her school newspaper and is drawn to a haunted house in her town for a story. That is where her journey begins. There have been reported ghost sightings and the town is intrigued. Hidly is determined to get the big story no matter what the consequences.

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Paterson</span> American author (born 1932)

Katherine Womelsdorf Paterson is an American writer best known for children's novels, including Bridge to Terabithia. For four different books published 1975–1980, she won two Newbery Medals and two National Book Awards. She is one of four people to win the two major international awards; for "lasting contribution to children's literature" she won the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 1998 and for her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2006, the biggest monetary prize in children's literature. Also for her body of work she was awarded the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2007 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the American Library Association in 2013. She was the second US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, serving 2010 and 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda Sue Park</span> Korean-American author (born 1960)

Linda Sue Park is a Korean-American author who published her first novel, Seesaw Girl, in 1999. She has written six children's novels and five picture books. Park's work achieved prominence when she received the prestigious 2002 Newbery Medal for her novel A Single Shard. She has written the ninth book in The 39 Clues, Storm Warning, published on May 25, 2010.

Cynthia Voigt is an American writer of books for young adults dealing with various topics such as adventure, mystery, racism and child abuse. Her first book in the Tillerman family series, Homecoming, was nominated for several international prizes and adapted as a 1996 film. Her novel Dicey's Song won the 1983 Newbery Medal.

Cynthia Rylant is an American author and librarian. She has written more than 100 children's books, including works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Several of her books have won awards, including her novel Missing May, which won the 1993 Newbery Medal, and A Fine White Dust, which was a 1987 Newbery Honor book. Two of her books are Caldecott Honor Books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynthia Kadohata</span> Japanese American childrens writer (born 1956)

Cynthia Kadohata is a Japanese American children's writer best known for her young adult novel Kira-Kira which won the Newbery Medal in 2005. She won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2013 for The Thing About Luck.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paula Fox</span> American author

Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books. She also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer; a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart; and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.

Irene Hunt was an American children's writer known best for historical novels. She was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal for her first book, Across Five Aprils, and won the medal for her second, Up a Road Slowly. For her contribution as a children's writer she was U.S. nominee in 1974 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition available to creators of children's books.

Nancy Farmer is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Paul Curtis</span> American childrens book author (born 1953)

Christopher Paul Curtis is an American children's book author. His first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, was published in 1995 and brought him immediate national recognition, receiving the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award and the Newbery Honor Book Award in addition to numerous other awards. In 2000, he became the first person to win both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award—prizes received for his second novel Bud, Not Buddy—and the first African-American man to win the Newbery Medal. His novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 was made into a television film in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Dean Myers</span> American childrens book author

Walter Dean Myers was an American writer of children's books best known for young adult literature. He was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, but was raised in Harlem. A tough childhood led him to writing and his school teachers would encourage him in this habit as a way to express himself. He wrote more than one hundred books including picture books and nonfiction. He won the Coretta Scott King Award for African-American authors five times. His 1988 novel Fallen Angels is one of the books most frequently challenged in the U.S. because of its adult language and its realistic depiction of the Vietnam War.

<i>Hope Was Here</i>

Hope Was Here is a 2000 novel by Joan Bauer. It was declared a Newbery Honor Book in 2001. The audiobook read by Jenna Lamia won the AudioFile Earphones Award. In 2001 won the award Best Books for Young Adults from American Library Association (ALA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacqueline Woodson</span> American writer

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Donnelly</span> American writer of young adult fiction

Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer best known for the young adult historical novel A Northern Light.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bette Greene</span> American writer (1934–2020)

Bette Jean Greene was the author of several books for children and young adults, including Summer of My German Soldier, The Drowning of Stephan Jones, and the Newbery Honor book Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. Lockhart</span> American writer

Emily Jenkins, who sometimes uses the pen name E. Lockhart, is an American writer of children's picture books, young-adult novels, and adult fiction. She is known best for the Ruby Oliver quartet, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and We Were Liars.

Mildred DeLois Taylor is a Newbery Award-winning American young adult novelist. She is best known for her novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, part of her Logan family series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Partridge</span> American writer

Elizabeth Partridge is an American writer, the author of more than a dozen books from young-adult nonfiction to picture books to photography books. Her books include Marching for Freedom, as well the biographies John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth, This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie, and Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange. Her latest book is the middle grade novel, Dogtag Summer.

Lynne Kelly is an American author of books for children and young adults. Her first novel, Chained, was published in May 2012 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux/Margaret Ferguson Books.

<i>Belle Praters Boy</i>

Belle Prater's Boy (1996) is a young adult novel by Ruth White that tells the story of 12-year-old Gypsy and her cousin Woodrow Prater, whose mother Belle Prater had mysteriously disappeared one morning. When Woodrow — the titular Belle Prater's boy — comes to town, she quickly befriends him in the hope that she will find out more about his mother's disappearance. The novel is set in 1950s Western Virginia. Belle Prater's Boy was named a Newbery Honor book in 1997, and a 1996 Boston Globe - Horn Book Awards Honor Book for Fiction

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erin Entrada Kelly</span> American writer

Erin Entrada Kelly is an American writer of children's literature. She was awarded the 2018 John Newbery Medal by the Association for Library Service to Children for her third novel, Hello, Universe.

References

  1. ↑ "Los Angeles Times Book Prize". web.mnstate.edu. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
  2. 1 2 "Publisher description for Squashed / Joan Bauer". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2014-03-31.
  3. 1 2 3 "2001 Newbery Medal and Honor Books". Association for Library Service to Children. American Library Association. Retrieved 2014-03-31.
  4. ↑ "Thwonk". Goodreads. Retrieved 2016-11-18.
  5. ↑ Joan Bauer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2014-03-31.
  6. ↑ "Tell me". Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2014-03-31.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.