Wendy Mass

Wendy Mass (born April 22, 1967), is an author of young adult novels and children's books.

Her most successful book was A Mango-Shaped Space which won the American Library Association (ALA) Schneider Family Book Award for Middle School in 2004.^[1]

Tamar Halpern adapted Wendy Mass's book Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life for a feature film and also directed.^[2]

Early life

Born in Livingston, New Jersey, Mass's favorite subjects in school were reading and writing. Wendy worked at town libraries and ghostwrote her friends' college applications. As a child she would compete with friends to see who could read the most books; this helped develop her writing skills. Her first career vision was to be an astronaut. Mass's first story, co-written by her two siblings when she was in junior high, starred a cat that somehow turned into a goat and destroyed her neighborhood. She also wrote a non-fiction story about a zoo which won a prize in an 8th grade writing contest.

In high school, Mass worked at local public libraries and continued to hone her writing skills. She took writing classes and decided on writing for her career.

College

As an English major at Tufts University, Mass continued to develop her writing skills. Mass mainly wrote short stories throughout college. After graduation she moved to Los Angeles, where she tried her hand at a multitude of writing businesses, including assisting a literary agent, and at a television casting company, editor of a magazine, and a script reader for a film producer. Mass however realized she wanted to inspire pre-teens, teens, and adults by writing books for children, teens, and adults. She moved back to her New Jersey hometown and while writing, worked as a book editor, operating out of New York City and Connecticut. She has a master's degree in creative writing from California State, Long Beach and a Doctor of Letters degree from Drew University.^[3]

Honors and awards

Over the last six years, Mass wrote seventeen successful educational books for teens. Mass won the American Library Association (ALA) Schneider Family Book Award for her children's book A Mango-Shaped Space in 2004.^[1] She won the American Library Association Award (best books for the teen age selection), New York Public, and New York Public Library Best Books for the teenage designation, Great Lakes Book Award and Michigan State award, and has since won 11 state book awards. She has written The Candymakers, which is about four kids who go to a factory to make sweets.

Personal life

Mass currently resides in Sparta, New Jersey with her family and their two cats. Her family includes her husband and twins.^[4]

Works

Non-fiction

• Stonehedge, (1990)
• Teen Drug Abuse , (1998)
• Women's Rights, (1998)
• Readings on Night, (2000)
• Great Authors of Children's' Literature, (2001)
• Gods and Goddesses, (2002)
• John Cabot: Early Explorer, (2004)
• Ray Bradbury: Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy, (2004)
• Halloween,

^[5]

Fiction

• Getting a Clue, (1996)
• The Bad Hair day, (1996 children's picture book)
• A Mango-Shaped Space, (2003)
• Leap Day, (2004)
• Rapunzel:The One with All the Hair, (2005)
• Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, (2006)
• Heaven Looks A Lot Like The Mall, (2007)
• Every Soul a Star, (2008)
• 11 Birthdays, (2009)
• Finally (2010)
• The Candymakers (2010)
• 13 Gifts (2011)
• Beauty and the Beast:The Only One Who Didn't Run Away (2012)
• Sleeping Beauty:The One Who Took The Really Long Nap (2012)
• Pi in The Sky (2013)
• The Last Present (2013)
• Space Taxi (2014)
• Graceful (2015)

TV scripts

• Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater, (2003) (with Stu Levine, and Tom Scharpling)

References

External links

• Official website
• Wendy Mass at Library of Congress Authorities, with 29 catalog records
• Wendy Mass at the Internet Movie Database