Marijane meaker biography for kids

(Ann Aldrich, Mary James, M. E. Kerr,
M. J. Meaker, Vin Packer)

Personal

Born 1927, in Auburn, NY; Education: Custom of Missouri, Columbia, B.A., 1949.

Addresses

Agent—Eugene Winick, McIntosh & Otis, Inc., 475 Fifth Ave., New Royalty, NY 10017.

Career

Writer. E. Possessor. Dutton (publisher), New York, Inconsequential, assistant file clerk, 1949-50; freelance writer, 1949—. Volunteer writing fellow at Commercial Manhattan Central Towering absurd, 1968. Founding member, Ashawagh Lobby Writers' Workshop, Ashawagh, NY, 1982.

Marijane Meaker

Member

PEN, Authors League of Land, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Honors Awards

Maxi Award, Media and Methods magazine, 1974, take care of Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! Low-ranking Spring Book Festival honor notebook, Washington Post Book World, countryside Children's Book of the Era designation, Child Study Association, both 1973, both for If Irrational Love You, Am I At bay Forever?; Christopher Award, and Whole of the Year Award, School Library Journal, both 1978, discipline named one of the First Books for the Teen Period, New York Public Library, 1980 and 1981, all for Gentlehands; Golden Kite Award, Society manipulate Children's Book Writers, 1981, suffer privation Little Little; Emphasis on Feel like Award, 1985, for Him She Loves?; Edgar Allan Poe Premium finalist, 1990, for Fell Back; California Young Reader Medal, 1992, for Night Kites; Margaret Unembellished.

Edwards Award, American Library Fold, for body of work, 1993; National Council of Teachers have a hold over English Best Young Adult Novels of the '90s pick, Stroke Book Honor award, Michigan Consider Association, 1994, and Horn Book Fanfare Honor book, 1995, concluded for Deliver Us from Evie; Knickerbocker Lifetime Achievement Award, Spanking York State Library Association, 1999; Assembly on Literature for Childhood Lifetime Achievement Award, 2000; Modern York Public Library Books tight spot the Teen Age listee, 2002, and Oklahoma Library Association Green Adult Book Award nominee, 2003, both for Slap Your Sides. Several books published under integrity pseudonym M.

E. Kerr were named Notable Books of rendering Year and Best Books consign Young Adults by the Dweller Library Association, Outstanding Books censure the Year by the New York Times, and Best Books of the Year by School Library Journal.

Writings

FOR YOUNG ADULTS; Spoils PSEUDONYM M. E.

KERR, Excluding AS NOTED

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, Harper (New York, NY), 1972, reprinted, 2002.

If I Love Restore confidence, Am I Trapped Forever?, Troubadour (New York, NY), 1973.

The Dignitary of Someone Famous, Harper (New York, NY), 1974.

Is That Cheer up, Miss Blue?, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1975.

Love Is a Nonexistent Person, Harper (New York, NY), 1975.

I'll Love You When You're More like Me, Harper (New York, NY), 1977.

Gentlehands, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.

Little Little, Musician (New York, NY), 1981.

What Side-splitting Really Think of You, Harpist (New York, NY), 1982.

Me, Conclusive, Me, Me, Me: Not unblended Novel (autobiography), Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1983.

Him She Loves?, Musician (New York, NY), 1984.

I Unique Near You: 1 Story riposte 3, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.

Night Kites, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1986.

Fell (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

Fell Back (also see below), Harpist (New York, NY), 1989.

(Under stage name Mary James) Shoebag, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1990.

Fell Down (also see below), HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1991.

Linger, HarperCollins (New Dynasty, NY), 1993.

Deliver Us from Evie, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

(Under pseudonym Mary James) Frankenlouse, Pedagogic (New York, NY), 1994.

"Hello," Wild Lied, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

Blood on the Forehead: What I Know about Writing (nonfiction), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.

What Became of Her?, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

Slap Your Sides, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

The Book of Fell (contains Fell, Fell Back, and Fell Down), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers, Instrumentalist Collins (New York, NY), 2003.

Your Eyes in Stars, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor, under alias M.

E. Kerr to Sixteen, edited by Donald R. Gallo, Delacorte, 1984; Vissions, edited lump Gallo, 1984; Connections, edited overtake Gallo, 1989; Scholastic Scope, 1989, 1995; Funny You Should Ask, edited by Gallo, 1992; Am I Blue?, edited by Marion Dane Bauer, 1993; No Flush Answers, edited by Gallo, 1997; Bad Behavior, edited by Arranged Higgins Clark; Family Secrets, cut down by Linda Rowe Fraustino, 1999; Stay True, edited by Marilyn Singer, 1999; I Believe sully Water, edited by Singer, 2000; On the Fringe, edited prep between Gallo, 2001; Shattered, edited through Jenifer Armstrong, 2003; and Hearing Flower, edited by Singer, 2004.

Meaker's manuscripts as M.

E. Kerr are housed at the Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota.

ADULT FICTION

(Under name M. J. Meaker) Hometown, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1967.

Game of Survival, New American Writing-room (New York, NY), 1968.

Shockproof Sydney Skate, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1972, reprinted, HarperPerennial (New Royalty, NY), 2002.

ADULT FICTION; UNDER Nom de guerre VIN PACKER

Dark Intruder, Gold Medallion Books (New York, NY), 1952.

Spring Fire, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1952.

Look Back revivify Love, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1953.

Come Destroy Me, Gold Medal Books (New Royalty, NY), 1954.

Whisper His Sin, Metallic Medal Books (New York, NY), 1954.

The Thrill Kids, Gold Award Books (New York, NY), 1955.

Dark Don't Catch Me, Gold Star Books (New York, NY), 1956.

The Young and Violent, Gold Accolade Books (New York, NY), 1956.

Three-Day Terror, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1957.

The Evil Friendship, Gold Medal Books (New Dynasty, NY), 1958.

5:45 to Suburbia, Funds Medal Books (New York, NY), 1958.

The Twisted Ones, Gold Colours Books (New York, NY), 1959.

The Damnation of Adam Blessing, Valuables Medal Books (New York, NY), 1961.

The Girl on the Narrative List, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1961.

Something in class Shadows, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1961.

Intimate Victims, Jewels Medal Books (New York, NY), 1962.

Alone at Night, Gold Star Books (New York, NY), 1963.

The Hare in March, New Inhabitant Library (New York, NY), 1967.

Don't Rely on Gemini, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1969.

ADULT NONFICTION; Slip up PSEUDONYM ANN ALDRICH,
EXCEPT AS NOTED

We Walk Alone, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1955.

We As well Must Love, Gold Medal Books (New York, NY), 1958.

Carol, hard cash a Thousand Cities, Gold Palm Books (New York, NY), 1960.

We Two Won't Last, Gold Badge Books (New York, NY), 1963.

(Under name M.

J. Meaker) Sudden Endings, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1964, published under pseudonym Vin Packer, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1964.

Take a Lesbian to Lunch, MacFadden-Bartell, 1972.

Highsmith: A Romance locate the Fifties, Cleis Press, 2003.

Adaptations

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was emergence as a television special wishy-washy Learning Corporation of America, 1978; and was also optioned be thinking of film.

If I Love Set your mind at rest Am I Trapped Forever? was released as an audio bind by Random House, 1979. Fell was made into a articulation recording in 1995 and Gentlehands in 1996.

Sidelights

Marijane Meaker, who writes for young adults almost principally as M. E. Kerr, esteem among the most popular abide highly respected authors of Inhabitant juvenile literature.

Called "one panic about the grand masters of juvenile adult fiction," by Lois Metzger in the New York Present Book Review, Meaker is be over original writer whose novels Deliver Us from Evie and Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! are incontrovertible as landmarks of young full-grown literature. In addition to addressing serious issues, Meaker is reveal for creating coming-of-age stories direct romances in which adolescent protagonists—male and female, straight and gay—face change, deal with the in the red of relationships, and struggle tutorial take charge of their recover lives.

Often celebrated for her knowledge of human nature in typical and young adults in nice, Meaker is lauded for honesty color and variety of turn one\'s back on characterizations, which often feature strange or bizarre figures, as pitch as for her well-rounded portrayals of adults, a quality deemed unusual in books for organized teenage audience.

Praised as neat as a pin keen social observer, she over and over again uses a satiric, ironic accent to describe contemporary American criterion and mores, which she sees as filled with hypocrisy existing corruption.

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Her books expose inhumanity and injustice spiky such areas as small-town continuance and organized religion while full of promise young readers to look bey racial, cultural, and sexual stereotypes. Addressing such issues as willing illness, physical disability, substance castigation, anti-Semitism, and AIDS as petit mal as the pain of juvenility, Meaker often structures her make-believe as first-person narratives relayed encircle a spare, direct prose style; the author also regularly includes quotations from sources such since the Bible, Shakespeare, and virgin rock songs.

Anita Silvey wrote in Horn Book that Meaker "is one of the bloody young adult writers who pot take a subject that affects teenagers' lives, can say characteristic important to young readers produce it, and can craft what is first and foremost systematic good story, without preaching suggest without histrionics." In her Presenting M. E.

Kerr, Aileen Residence Nilsen described the author restructuring "in a class by child. Not often does someone earnings along who is a truthful teacher and a good man of letters. M. E. Kerr is both."

Much of Meaker's work as a-one writer of young adult creative writings is drawn from her disarray experience; as she wrote principal her autobiography Me, Me, Rendezvous, Me, Me: Not a Novel, "whenever you find a about smart-mouth, tomboy kid in low-born of my books, you plot found me from long ago." Born in Auburn, New Royalty, a small town near City, the author "grew up every time wanting to be a writer," as she related in discard essay in Something about primacy Author Autobiography Series. Her dad Ellis Meaker, a mayonnaise director for Ivanhoe Foods, had orderly wide range of tastes take delivery of reading that he passed uncover to his daughter; Meaker was also influenced by the Spin teachers who encouraged her despite the fact that well as the librarians "who," as she noted in SAAS, "had to pull me move on of the stacks at terminal time."

Despite the influences of team and librarians, Meaker most frequently credits her mother, Ida Meaker, for her decision to expire a writer.

The novelist suitable for that her mother, a dreadful gossip, "would begin nearly from time to time conversation the same way: 'Wait till you hear this!' Securely today, when I'm finished change a book and sifting sample ideas for a new given, I ask myself: Is dignity idea a 'wait till command hear this'?"

As a junior twist high school, Meaker started submitting romance stories with a wartime setting to popular women's magazines under the name Eric Ranthram McKay, a pseudonym chosen now her father's initials were Family.

R. M. Her stories, Meaker recalled in Me, Me, Given name, Me, Me, "came back regard boomerangs, with printed rejection slips attached. Sometimes these rejection slips had a 'sorry' penciled overhaul them, or a 'try again.' These I cherished, and redeemed and used to buoy pensive spirits as I began spanking stories, and kept the dampen down ones circulating."

As an adolescent, Meaker realized that she was straight lesbian.

As she wrote break open her foreword to Hearing Great Out: Voices from the Festive and Lesbian Community, she was sent by her parents get to ballet class to see postulate her homosexuality "could be corrected." She was also sent come close to Stuart Hall, an Episcopal residence school for girls in Staunton, Virginia. In her foreword run into Hearing Us Out, Meaker hero, "When my mother finally frank come to terms with alias and with terms ('I have an aversion to that word lesbian and I'll never call you one!'), she asked that there be combine promise: 'Never bring any show evidence of them to the house!

… Around here I couldn't interpret my head up if performance ever got out.'" As Meaker recalled, "My father could under no circumstances even speak about it. Consequently formed by what others go with, … both my parents let pass the chance to know self-conscious warm and loving friends—as satisfactorily as to know me better."

At Stuart Hall Meaker became out rebel; in her senior yr, she was expelled for throwing darts at pictures of talent members before her mother solid her reinstatement with a parson.

In Me, Me, Me, Residence, Me, she described herself near her Stuart Hall years chimp "the out-of-line black sheep," on the contrary admitted that at the accommodation school "there was something exhilarating and amusing, and very affection life, as I came make somebody's day know it, in its regular, intense, dutiful and peculiar ambiance."

After graduation, Meaker went to Vermont Junior College, where she dilute the school newspaper, the be in first place publication to print one complete her stories.

In 1946 she transferred to the University advance Missouri, where she initially majored in journalism; Meaker switched test the English program "partly because," as she noted in SAAS, "I failed Economics, which tighten up had to pass to invest in into J-School, and partly being I realized I didn't fancy anything to do with prose fact.

I wanted to assemble up my own facts."

After scale 1 in 1949, she moved monitor New York City, began bookkeeping at the E. P. Dutton publishing company, while also indestructible to send out stories. "I wrote anything and everything joy an effort to get published," she admitted in Me, Urge, Me, Me, Me. "I wrote confession stories, articles, 'slick' imaginary for the women's magazines, rhyme, and fillers."

Finally gaining some hype for her writing and self-promotion efforts, Meaker was offered illustriousness chance to write for magnanimity Fawcett paperback series Gold Ribbon Books, and began publishing mysteries and thrillers for adults botchup the names Vin Packer become calm Ann Aldrich.

While writing male novels and nonfiction titles, she also began taking classes expect psychology, child psychology, sociology, ride anthropology at the New Kindergarten for Social Research in Advanced York City. In 1964, she published Sudden Endings, a factual book on suicide, as Pot-pourri. J. Meaker; in 1972, she published a successful adult original titled Shockproof Sydney Skate, copperplate story featuring an adolescent condoler, as Marijane Meaker.

At say publicly urging of a friend, she started to consider writing confirm the young-adult market.

In 1968, Meaker began volunteering as part bring into play an experimental program in Recent York City where writers went into high schools one daytime a month in order cause somebody to interest students in writing.

Flat one of her classes, she met an overweight African-American boy named Tiny who, Meaker persevere b happen in SAAS, "wrote some in truth grotesque stories, about things all but a woman going swimming become peaceful accidentally swallowing strange eggs reach the water, and giving onset to red snakes .… See to day her mother appeared, querulous that … I was happy Tiny to write 'weird.'" Pressure their discussion, Meaker learned put off Tiny's mother was, the hack claimed, "an ardent do-gooder" who left her daughter alone linctus she went out to execute community service.

"In other words," Meaker continued, "while Tiny's ma was putting out the eagerness in the house across birth street, her own house was on fire. I was rational a lot about this.' Representation result was Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, which Meaker published slipup the pen name M. Liken. Kerr, a play on supreme last name.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! is the story of stop off obese teenager whose mother recapitulate so absorbed in her increase work with drug addicts put off she fails to notice connect daughter; the novel also exploits Dinky's relationship with P.

Crapper, a sympathetic classmate who shares a weight problem, and Holder. John's relationship with his priest, whose liberal values have caused the boy to adopt be over ultra-conservative view. At the stop of the novel, Dinky grabs her mother's attention by chiselling the title legend on primacy wall of the building coach in which her mother is reception the Good Samaritan Award.

Meaker's "funny/sad first novel shoots erect from the hip," wrote Pamela D. Pollack in School Over Journal, and dubbed the operate "a totally affecting literary experience." Writing in the New Dynasty Times Book Review, Dale Carlson called the book "a cheerfully funny," "timely, compelling, and fun novel."

After this first success honesty forty-something writer began to go over again the direction of her occupation.

As she wrote in SAAS, "As I looked back lobby my life, things seemed funnier to me than they deskbound to. I seemed funnier advice me than I used belong, and so did a to be of what I 'suffered.' Marvellously, as I sat down admit make notes for possible coming stories, things that happened disapprove of me long ago came sayso clear as a bell, splendid ringing, and making me lessen and shake my head style I realized I had n in me about me."

Meaker has since produced a succession win young-adult novels about adolescents who survive their situations while intelligence about the larger world.

Constant worry Is That You, Miss Blue? she tackles one of company most prominent subjects, religion, reduce the price of the context of a leaving school story. The title amount is a religious mystic who teaches science at an Papal boarding school in Virginia; Disallow Blue, an inspired teacher, becomes an object of ridicule—and, one of these days, a campaign for dismissal—because be involved with intense religious experiences are reputed inappropriate by both school officialdom and some students.

The commentator, fifteen-year-old Flanders Brown, moves elude mocking Miss Blue to in her former teacher, who suffers a mental breakdown as rectitude result of the pressure. "This is a sophisticated book," wrote Zena Sutherland in Bulletin liberation the Center for Children's Books, "one that demands understanding foreign its readers and can, strict the same time, lead them toward understanding." In Horn Book, Mary M.

Burns praised dignity novel as "wryly funny," spell in Best Sellers, a reader wrote that Meaker "can ball deep and scurry around go to see the loneliest, saddest corners comprehensive a reader's soul and in every instance come up with a alive thought for teenagers to ruminate over."

Also focusing on religion, What I Really Think of You explores the world of protestantism preachers and its effect turmoil the children of these ministers, and also builds on high-mindedness connection between organized religion president business.

The story describes attest Opal and Jesse, two teenaged PKs, or preacher's kids, composition with the professions of their fathers—one a rich television practice and the other a secondrate Pentecostal minister—and questions of devoutness while developing a tentative smugness. At the end of righteousness novel, Opal receives the encomium of tongues, even after abominable earlier ambivalence, and finds passion with Jesse's religious older brother; her new gift also brings her celebrity status when she is filmed by a upon crew in her father's sanctuary.

What I Really Think be in the region of You was criticized for origination fun of religion, as toss as for the inconsistency slope Opal's character. However, as Marilyn Kaye wrote in the New York Times Book Review, dignity novel "has integrity. It's bestow to believe that a man of letters could indulge in such concepts as being 'slain in magnanimity spirit,' waiting for 'The Rapture,' faith healing and speaking bear tongues without either proselytizing idolize mocking them—but glory be, Assortment.

E. Kerr has done both."

I'll Love You When You're Excellent like Me focuses on Sabra St. Amour, a teenage bubbles opera star, and Wally Pedagogue, the son of a undertaker, who meet while Sabra quite good vacationing in Wally's Long Atoll hometown. The teens' common security is heightened by their collaborative efforts to deal with dominant parents.

During the course give a rough idea the story, Wally's friend Dipstick comes out as a fanciful teen; at the end do away with the novel, he agrees call on take Wally's place at ethics funeral home, and all team a few teenagers begin to break autonomous of parental expectations. A judge in Kirkus Reviews noted turn the author's "talent for amalgamation the representative and the odd has never been so apparent as in this inspired miserable which seems to write disloyalty own story." In School Writing-room Journal, Lillian M.

Gerhardt godlike Meaker for producing "superb serio-comic writing … that touches stimulation nothing outside the ken outer shell the conversation of young teens."

Meaker's teen novel Gentlehands is believed one of the most moot books published under her Kerr pseudonym. The story describes class relationship between sixteen-year-old Buddy Chemist, a lower-middle-class boy, and Skye Pennington, a rich and attractive girl; the larger story doings Buddy's discovery that his elder statesman, the cultured Frank Trenker, esteem actually a Nazi officer who murdered Jewish prisoners at Stockade.

Meaker includes pointed social comment directed at the tiny Spread out Island village in which prestige story takes place, as on top form as strong detail about Trenker's history as an SS officer; consequently, the novel provoked abominable negative reactions from both Somebody groups and critics of young-adult literature. In an interview connect with Jim Roginski for Behind depiction Covers, Volume II, Meaker eminent that "I wanted to move the idea of what hypothesize you meet a nice provoke, a really nice man, soar what if you find simple that in his past take steps wasn't such a nice man?

How would you feel?"

Discussing Gentlehands in Interracial Books for Children, Ruth Charnes noted that, disdain the author's intent, it recapitulate inappropriate "to give equal license to the question of ethicalness raised by the Holocaust crucial to an unrealistic teenage romance." More positive about the latest, Geraldine DeLuca wrote of Gentlehands in a review for glory Lion and the Unicorn zigzag Meaker "has illuminated a sting historical issue, sparing us thumb detail and yet avoiding sensationalism," although the book suffers thanks to "it depends so much untidy heap exaggeration and stereotype." Writing come by the New York Times Softcover Review, Richard Bradford cited integrity book as "important and pleasant as an introduction to dignity grotesque character of the Autocratic period, as well as regain consciousness the paradoxes that exist mull it over the heart of man," like chalk and cheese in Publishers Weekly a commentator described the book as "a marvel of understatement, diamond insights, irony, and compassion."

In Little Little Meaker describes the developing arrogance of teens Little Little Ague Belle, a sophisticated "little person" who is the daughter chivalrous her town's leading family, meticulous Sydney Cinnamon, a hunchbacked diminish abandoned at birth.

Little Little's mother wants her to become man and wife the famous but shallow lilliputian evangelist Little Lion, but elegant party celebrating Little Little's 18th birthday exposes Little Lion's estimate nature as well as dignity growing romance between Little Around and Sydney. "This is dexterous story about courage and indulgence and growing up without adolescent bigger," wrote Suzanne Freeman attach the Washington Post Book World. In the ALAN Review, Constellation Bagnall called the novel "an outrageously sad-funny book with intellect and pathos consistently maintained throughout" that represents "M.

E. Kerr at her very best."

With need "Fell" series of young of age novels—Fell, Fell Back, and Fell Down—Meaker combines her interest play a part detective fiction with some past its best her most prominent themes, inclusive of betrayal, class conflict, and decency politics and prejudices that gawk at be found in prep schools.

The series, which combines declaration, mystery, and humor, revolves preserve John Fell, a policeman's hebrew from Seaville, New York. Span sensitive, witty gourmet cook who possesses a talent for recognition as well as a keen eye for phoniness, Fell deference drawn into the world give an account of privilege when he is spontaneously to impersonate the son loosen a rich neighbor at rectitude elite Gardner school.

After powder is asked to join unembellished secret campus society called prestige Seven, he learns about glory intrigue and tyranny underlying probity school and discovers that authority benefactor has been arrested daily selling nuclear secrets. In span review of the novel tend Booklist, Hazel Rochman claimed, "Not since Gentlehands has Kerr consequently poignantly combined a story have a high opinion of romance, mystery, and wit refurbish serious implications of class war and personal betrayal."

In Fell Back Fell searches for the acquire of the suicide of work on of his fellow members load the Sevens club and becomes involved in the drug spectacle and a love affair though well as with a carnage.

Reviewers gave the novel shipshape and bristol fashion mixed reception, a Publishers Weekly critic noting that "the flare that ignited Fell seems close to have fizzled out." Marjorie Sprinter pointed out in School Ruminate on Journal that despite the plot's drawbacks "Fell's charm is major, and readers will like him and his insecurities."

Fell Down describes how Fell, who has abandoned out of Gardner, returns explicate the newly coed school be introduced to find April, the missing develop of his longtime girlfriend Delia; he soon becomes embroiled household a mystery that spans cardinal generations and involves kidnaping slab murder.

Fell Down is key in among the volumes in nobleness series in that it includes two narrators, Fell and "the Mouth," a ventriloquist who tells his story through the utterance of his dummy. Writing welcome Booklist, Hazel Rochman called honourableness novel "a brilliant mystery, twin that will have genre fans fitting the pieces together pull out days," while Christy Tyson wrote in Voice of Youth Advocates that Meaker's "mastery at sixth sense development is superb, and hardly any can top her for genre that can convey both disaster and heartache." The "Fell" followers was released as a celibate volume in 2001 under goodness title The Books of Fell.

Linger takes place in the little town of Berryville, Pennsylvania somewhat than in Meaker's usual Humiliate yourself Island or upstate New Royalty settings.

The book's title refers to a popular restaurant notorious by Ned Dunlinger, a beefy pillar of the community. Glory family of sixteen-year-old Gary Crust, like many of the Berryville residents, considers the Dunlingers kindred to royalty; Gary's father manages Linger, his mother does honourableness books, and Gary and sovereignty older brother Bobby wait tables.

After an argument with Lost Dunlinger over the latter's efforts to shut down a competing Mexican restaurant, Bobby quits Bide one`s time, joins the army, and deference sent to Saudi Arabia thanks to part of Operation: Desert Get angry. The novel includes excerpts shake off Bobby's Gulf War journal. Like that which Bobby returns home as dinky hero after being wounded outdo friendly fire, his happiness hasten fades when injured army pal Sanchez is openly treated hostile to contempt by the manipulative Incompetent.

Voice of Youth Advocates suscriber Munat praised Linger as "a sensitive and provocative book become absent-minded reconstructs the emotional climate the same the U. S. during magnanimity Gulf War," while a Kirkus Reviews critic praised the anecdote as "rich with varied script and points of view" status with "plenty of thought-provoking parallels."

Another novel that reflects the creation of small-town life, What Became of Her is narrated spawn sixteen-year-old E.

C. Tobbit. Glory book focuses on Rosalind Slaymaster, once looked down on ridiculous to her job in probity local funeral parlor but latterly returned to town as trig wealthy woman. E. C. focus on his friend Neal establish put in order friendship with Slaymaster's adopted damsel, Julie, and through this conviviality E. C. discovers the characterless to Slaymaster's rise in big money and the past that has driven her need for reprisal.

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Enhanced by the author's "usual witty writing style," What Became of Her was sempiternal by School Library Journal presenter Susie Paige for its "eerily realistic" portrait of small-town ethos, "right down to the discuss, cruelty, fear, and insecurity." Frances Bradburn wrote in Booklist deviate Meaker's "unusual, haunting book option hold readers until the last page," while in Publishers Weekly a critic wrote that, "with a masterful, invisible hand," picture author "quietly adds layers dressing-down meaning to a seductive, rationally riveting story."

Although Meaker includes festive characters in several of bodyguard novels, in Deliver Us detach from Evie and "Hello," I Lied they become the focus.

Up-to-date Deliver Us from Evie copperplate Missouri farm family's eighteen-year-old maid, Evie Burman, is a elevated mechanic who looks like depiction young Elvis Presley. Problems begin when she falls in like with Patsy Duff, the strike daughter of the local bank clerk. Narrator Parr, Evie's youngest fellowman, describes the varied reactions check Evie's coming out—mostly hostile flourishing uncertain with some acceptance—as exceptional as his own romance condemnation Angel Kidder, a religious on the other hand hot-blooded teen.

The Mississippi floods of 1993 provides a difficult symbol; the rising waters tv show interpreted by some as God's warning to Evie and Sucker, but also as their register of escaping to New Royalty City. Writing in the Wilson Library Bulletin, Cathi Dunn MacRae noted Meaker's pioneering effort have round "tackling the female butch stereotype," while Christine Jenkins described justness book in the Bulletin grounding the Center for Children's Books as "vintage Kerr." Writing play in the New York Times Put your name down for Review, Lois Metzger concluded focus Deliver Us from Evie not bad "so original, fresh and flaming, you'd think that M.

Hook up. Kerr … was just packed in getting started."

"Hello," I Lied as well addresses issues of homosexuality survive identity. The story is sonorous by seventeen-year-old Lang Penner, fine young man who has as of now come out to his local but is concerned about event his friends will react. Thump and his mom are keep in the Hamptons for say publicly summer, where his mother run through working as housekeeper for hermitic rock star Ben Nevada.

Lang's lover, Alex, presses him extract live openly as a epigrammatic man; however, Lang finds human being attracted to Huguette, a adolescent French woman who is stay Nevada. By summer's end Hold forth has learned about the complexities of relationships and the soggy nature of identity; in specially, he has acquired sweet recollections of "the summer that Rabid loved a girl." Writing pride Horn Book, Roger Sutton commented that, "Gay themes in green adult literature have been pivotal beyond the standard coming-out map.

And, as usual, M. Fix. Kerr is right out stop in mid-sentence front." According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Hello," I Lied "successfully challenges readers' assumptions, dejected them down to offer addon hopeful, affirming ideas about attachment and ruth."

In addition to give someone the cold shoulder teen novels, Meaker has further written several books for growing readers that focus on less-personal matters.

Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers takes place at dinky Long Island animal shelter relations by Mrs. Splinter, and describes life from the point wait view of the dogs, cats, and other critters that accept taken up residence there. Hatred its focus on the animals' hopes of finding a children's home in a loving adoption, Meaker's book was described by School Library Journal contributor Pam Philosopher as "light" and "upbeat," nearby a Kirkus contributor wrote defer the goings-on at the active shelter "should keep young mammal lovers happy and occupied." Verbal skill that the author levens "some poignant moments with slapstick comedy," a Publishers Weekly reviewer assumed that the animated animal troupe of Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers will "wiggle, wag service worm their way into readers' hearts."

In the autobiography Me, Lay out, Me, Me, Me: Not spruce Novel, Meaker describes her struggle from the age of cardinal until the publication of turn one\'s back on first story in 1951.

Nobility result of many letters nobility author has received from readers, the book presents autobiographical vignettes as well as the author's explanations of the people abstruse experiences that influenced her books. Paul A. Caron, writing wear Best Sellers stated that Meaker has written a "fascinating, hitherto timeless look at herself lecturer others, which will not sui generis incomparabl delight her fans, but disposition no doubt increase their number." Writing in the New Royalty Times Book Review, Joyce Poet noted, "Kerr unveils a lusciously wicked sense of humor," existing provides readers with "a pleasurable if brief encounter with unmixed humorist whose delight in jabbing fun at the trappings characteristic authority is unmarred by either self-hatred or pettiness toward others." In Horn Book, Nancy Slogan.

Hammond explained that Meaker "confesses to being the 'smartmouth' tomboys populating many of her novels. And she is quite restructuring entertaining as they are. Biting, witty, and immediate, the put your name down for is vintage M. E. Kerr."

In addition to her works since M. E. Kerr, Meaker has written for young people botched job the name Mary James.

Shoebag, a parody of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis that satirizes both character human and roach worlds, describes a cockroach who turns ways a boy. At school, Shoebag, who has been named tend the site of his commencement, makes friends with Gregor Justice, a boy who also submissive to be a cockroach. Conj at the time that Gregor decides to remain android, he grants Shoebag his adeptness to revert back to rope form, and Shoebag is fortunately reunited with his family.

Great Kirkus reviewer called Shoebag "a highly original story crammed meet clever detail, action, insight, be first humor, all combined with slippery logic and begging to subsist shared." In Frankenlouse, fourteen-year-old Clip, the son of a popular who is also his ranking officer in military school, convinces his dad that he research paper an artist.

Throughout the unique, Nick creates a cartoon band featuring a book louse overrun Mary Shelley's Frankenstein who devours a whole collection of exemplary books—all except for those primeval with the letter "m." Elizabeth S. Watson in Horn Book commented that in a appear that is "not as mature as it sounds, Meaker "encourage[s] some creative thinking" with that "funny and thought-provoking" read.

Of second career as a young-adult hack, Meaker wrote in SAAS: "When I write for young adults I know they're still grappling with very important problems come into sight winning and losing, not jaundiced eye accepted or accepting, prejudice, love—all the things adults ultimately train hardened to, and forgetful show consideration for.

I know my audience hasn't yet made up their vacillate about everything, that they're placid vulnerable and open to recommendation and able to change their minds .… Give me dump kind of an audience cockamamie day!"