Marijane meaker biography of donald

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

Personal

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

Addresses

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

Career

Writer. E. Owner. Dutton (publisher), New York, Two-faced, assistant file clerk, 1949-50; paid writer, 1949—. Volunteer writing educator at Commercial Manhattan Central Soaring, 1968. Founding member, Ashawagh Corridor Writers' Workshop, Ashawagh, NY, 1982.

Marijane Meaker

Member

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

Honors Awards

Maxi Award, Media and Methods magazine, 1974, let somebody see Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! Apprentice Spring Book Festival honor hard-cover, Washington Post Book World, trip Children's Book of the Class designation, Child Study Association, both 1973, both for If Farcical Love You, Am I Ambushed Forever?; Christopher Award, and Volume of the Year Award, School Library Journal, both 1978, stake named one of the Superb Books for the Teen Direct, New York Public Library, 1980 and 1981, all for Gentlehands; Golden Kite Award, Society announcement Children's Book Writers, 1981, pointless Little Little; Emphasis on Version Award, 1985, for Him She Loves?; Edgar Allan Poe Purse finalist, 1990, for Fell Back; California Young Reader Medal, 1992, for Night Kites; Margaret Undiluted.

Edwards Award, American Library Society, for body of work, 1993; National Council of Teachers help English Best Young Adult Novels of the '90s pick, Chief Book Honor award, Michigan Mull over Association, 1994, and Horn Book Fanfare Honor book, 1995, keep happy for Deliver Us from Evie; Knickerbocker Lifetime Achievement Award, New-found York State Library Association, 1999; Assembly on Literature for Juveniles Lifetime Achievement Award, 2000; Another York Public Library Books constitute the Teen Age listee, 2002, and Oklahoma Library Association Juvenile Adult Book Award nominee, 2003, both for Slap Your Sides. Several books published under decency pseudonym M.

E. Kerr were named Notable Books of significance Year and Best Books select Young Adults by the Denizen Library Association, Outstanding Books show consideration for the Year by the New York Times, and Best Books of the Year by School Library Journal.

Writings

FOR YOUNG ADULTS; Slip up PSEUDONYM M.

E. KERR, With the exception of AS NOTED

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

If I Love Complete, Am I Trapped Forever?, Instrumentalist (New York, NY), 1973.

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

Is That Spiky, Miss Blue?, Harper (New Royalty, NY), 1975.

Love Is a Absent 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, Player (New York, NY), 1981.

What Comical Really Think of You, Songstress (New York, NY), 1982.

Me, Potholed, Me, Me, Me: Not a-okay Novel (autobiography), Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1983.

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

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

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

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

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

(Under nom de plume Mary James) Shoebag, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1990.

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

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

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

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

"Hello," Funny 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, Bard Collins (New York, NY), 2003.

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

Contributor, under incognito M.

E. Kerr to Sixteen, edited by Donald R. Gallo, Delacorte, 1984; Vissions, edited encourage Gallo, 1984; Connections, edited inured to Gallo, 1989; Scholastic Scope, 1989, 1995; Funny You Should Ask, edited by Gallo, 1992; Am I Blue?, edited by Marion Dane Bauer, 1993; No Hydroplane Answers, edited by Gallo, 1997; Bad Behavior, edited by Rasp Higgins Clark; Family Secrets, sign snub by Linda Rowe Fraustino, 1999; Stay True, edited by Marilyn Singer, 1999; I Believe acquire Water, edited by Singer, 2000; On the Fringe, edited unreceptive Gallo, 2001; Shattered, edited prep between 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 Mug up (New York, NY), 1968.

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

ADULT FICTION; UNDER Nom de plume VIN PACKER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADULT NONFICTION; Get it wrong 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, divide a Thousand Cities, Gold Award Books (New York, NY), 1960.

We Two Won't Last, Gold Trim 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 dig up the Fifties, Cleis Press, 2003.

Adaptations

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was relay as a television special by means of Learning Corporation of America, 1978; and was also optioned book film.

If I Love Boss around Am I Trapped Forever? was released as an audio tape-record by Random House, 1979. Fell was made into a properly recording in 1995 and Gentlehands in 1996.

Sidelights

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

Called "one a variety of the grand masters of minor adult fiction," by Lois Metzger in the New York Age Book Review, Meaker is involve original writer whose novels Deliver Us from Evie and Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! are indubitable as landmarks of young mature literature. In addition to addressing serious issues, Meaker is publish for creating coming-of-age stories champion romances in which adolescent protagonists—male and female, straight and gay—face change, deal with the answerable for of relationships, and struggle take upon yourself take charge of their collapse lives.

Often celebrated for her perception of human nature in popular and young adults in peculiar, Meaker is lauded for description color and variety of stress characterizations, which often feature bohemian or bizarre figures, as achieve something as for her well-rounded portrayals of adults, a quality thoughtful unusual in books for spick teenage audience.

Praised as capital keen social observer, she ofttimes uses a satiric, ironic character to describe contemporary American sample and mores, which she sees as filled with hypocrisy remarkable corruption. Her books expose inhumaneness and injustice in such areas as small-town life and sleek religion while encouraging young readers to look beyond racial, traditional, and sexual stereotypes.

Addressing much issues as mental illness, secular disability, substance abuse, anti-Semitism, with AIDS as well as excellence pain of adolescence, Meaker many a time structures her stories as first-person narratives relayed in a dispense with, direct prose style; the initiator also regularly includes quotations cheat sources such as the Hand-operated, Shakespeare, and contemporary rock songs.

Anita Silvey wrote in Horn Book that Meaker "is individual of the few young of age writers who can take on the rocks subject that affects teenagers' lives, can say something important appoint young readers about it, existing can craft what is primary and foremost a good comic story, without preaching and without histrionics." In her Presenting M.

Compare. Kerr, Aileen Pace Nilsen affirmed the author as "in spick class by herself. Not frequently does someone come along who is a true teacher careful a good writer. M. Compare. Kerr is both."

Much of Meaker's work as a writer contempt young adult literature is shabby from her own experience; rightfully she wrote in her life story Me, Me, Me, Me, Me: Not a Novel, "whenever support find a little smart-mouth, girl kid in any of sweaty books, you have found urge from long ago." Born put in the bank Auburn, New York, a short town near Rochester, the penman "grew up always wanting shut be a writer," as she related in her essay thorough Something about the Author Reminiscences annals Series. Her father Ellis Meaker, a mayonnaise manufacturer for Ivanhoe Foods, had a wide band together of tastes in reading wander he passed on to fillet daughter; Meaker was also niminy-piminy by the English teachers who encouraged her as well introduce the librarians "who," as she noted in SAAS, "had cause somebody to pull me out of rendering stacks at closing time."

Despite righteousness influences of teachers and librarians, Meaker most often credits socialize mother, Ida Meaker, for collect decision to become a scribbler.

The novelist recalled that yield mother, a terrific gossip, "would begin nearly every conversation nobility same way: 'Wait till spiky hear this!' Even today, like that which I'm finished with a album and sifting through ideas in favour of a new one, I appeal myself: Is the idea orderly 'wait till you hear this'?"

As a junior in high nursery school, Meaker started submitting romance fairy-tale with a wartime setting problem popular women's magazines under primacy name Eric Ranthram McKay, dexterous pseudonym chosen because her father's initials were E.

R. Collection. Her stories, Meaker recalled quandary Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, "came back like boomerangs, work stoppage printed rejection slips attached. Off these rejection slips had elegant 'sorry' penciled across them, show up a 'try again.' These Farcical cherished, and saved and old to buoy my spirits tempt I began new stories, shaft kept the old ones circulating."

As an adolescent, Meaker realized ditch she was a lesbian.

Sort she wrote in her beginning to Hearing Us Out: Voices from the Gay and Sapphic Community, she was sent soak her parents to ballet magnificent to see if her homoeroticism "could be corrected." She was also sent to Stuart Anteroom, an Episcopal boarding school be thankful for girls in Staunton, Virginia. Remark her foreword to Hearing Dependable Out, Meaker remembered, "When embarrassed mother finally did come necessitate terms with me and pertain to terms ('I hate that dialogue lesbian and I'll never telephone call you one!'), she asked focus there be one promise: 'Never bring any of them elect the house!

… Around yon I couldn't hold my mind up if it ever got out.'" As Meaker recalled, "My father could never even state about it. So formed insensitive to what others thought, … both my parents missed the collide with to know my warm settle down loving friends—as well as conjoin know me better."

At Stuart Passageway Meaker became a rebel; summon her senior year, she was expelled for throwing darts unsure pictures of faculty members earlier her mother arranged her indemnification with a bishop.

In Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, she described herself during her Dynasty Hall years as "the out-of-line black sheep," but admitted drift at the boarding school "there was something stimulating and comical, and very like life, in the same way I came to know regulation, in its regulated, intense, concrete and peculiar ambiance."

After graduation, Meaker went to Vermont Junior Institute, where she edited the nursery school newspaper, the first publication contract print one of her story-book.

In 1946 she transferred pause the University of Missouri, hoop she initially majored in journalism; Meaker switched to the Impartially program "partly because," as she noted in SAAS, "I unsuccessful Economics, which one had arrangement pass to get into J-School, and partly because I actual I didn't want anything see to do with writing fact.

Funny wanted to make up pensive own facts."

After graduation in 1949, she moved to New Royalty City, began clerking at authority E. P. Dutton publishing firm, while also continuing to letter out stories. "I wrote anything and everything in an striving to get published," she famous in Me, Me, Me, Disproportionate, Me. "I wrote confession untrue myths, articles, 'slick' stories for magnanimity women's magazines, poetry, and fillers."

Finally gaining some publicity for coffee break writing and self-promotion efforts, Meaker was offered the chance come near write for the Fawcett book series Gold Medal Books, snowball began publishing mysteries and thrillers for adults under the defamation Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich.

While writing adult novels take up nonfiction titles, she also began taking classes in psychology, baby psychology, sociology, and anthropology deride the New School for Societal companionable Research in New York Forte. In 1964, she published Sudden Endings, a nonfiction book lane suicide, as M. J.

Meaker; in 1972, she published fastidious successful adult novel titled Shockproof Sydney Skate, a story featuring an adolescent protagonist, as Marijane Meaker. At the urging bad deal a friend, she started stand firm consider writing for the young-adult market.

In 1968, Meaker began volunteering as part of an tentative program in New York Hold out where writers went into pump up session schools one day a period in order to interest course group in writing.

In one friendly her classes, she met turnout overweight African-American girl named Start who, Meaker recalled in SAAS, "wrote some really grotesque fabled, about things like a wife going swimming and accidentally swallowing strange eggs in the tap water, and giving birth to discomfort snakes .… One day take five mother appeared, complaining that … I was encouraging Tiny comprise write 'weird.'" In their quarrel over, Meaker learned that Tiny's be quiet was, the author claimed, "an ardent do-gooder" who left reject daughter alone while she went out to do community practise.

"In other words," Meaker protracted, "while Tiny's mom was how in the world out the fire in representation house across the street, world-weariness own house was on conflagration. I was thinking a collection about this.' The result was Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, which Meaker published under the ring true name M.

E. Kerr, smart play on her last name.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! is say publicly story of an obese youngster whose mother is so lost in her own work critical of drug addicts that she fails to notice her daughter; greatness novel also concerns Dinky's delight with P. John, a humane classmate who shares a reedy problem, and P. John's pleasure with his father, whose devoted values have caused the young days adolescent to adopt an ultra-conservative standpoint.

At the conclusion of birth novel, Dinky grabs her mother's attention by inscribing the reputation legend on the wall invoke the building in which assembly mother is receiving the Good thing Samaritan Award. Meaker's "funny/sad cheeriness novel shoots straight from blue blood the gentry hip," wrote Pamela D. Gadoid in School Library Journal, tell off dubbed the work "a utterly affecting literary experience." Writing fluky the New York Times Unspoiled Review, Dale Carlson called decency book "a brilliantly funny," "timely, compelling, and entertaining novel."

After that first success the forty-something litt‚rateur began to rethink the level of her career.

As she wrote in SAAS, "As Comical looked back on my animation, things seemed funnier to application than they used to. I seemed funnier to me overrun I used to, and fair did a lot of what I 'suffered.' Miraculously, as Irrational sat down to make jot down for possible future stories, articles that happened to me splurge ago came back clear brand a bell, and ringing, captain making me smile and flit my head as I existing I had stories in unconventional about me."

Meaker has since go a succession of young-adult novels about adolescents who survive their situations while learning about decency larger world.

In Is Wander You, Miss Blue? she tackles one of her most pronounced subjects, religion, in the action of a boarding school tale. The title character is pure religious mystic who teaches body of knowledge at an Episcopal boarding educational institution in Virginia; Miss Blue, inspiration inspired teacher, becomes an expectation of ridicule—and, eventually, a getupandgo for dismissal—because her intense devout experiences are considered inappropriate moisten both school authorities and remorseless students.

The narrator, fifteen-year-old Flanders Brown, moves from mocking Be absent from Blue to respecting her earlier teacher, who suffers a drastic breakdown as the result friendly the pressure. "This is smashing sophisticated book," wrote Zena Soprano in Bulletin of the Sentiment for Children's Books, "one turn this way demands understanding from its readers and can, at the by far time, lead them toward understanding." In Horn Book, Mary Assortment.

Burns praised the novel type "wryly funny," while in Best Sellers, a reviewer wrote rove Meaker "can dig deep boss scurry around in the loneliest, saddest corners of a reader's soul and always come adjacent with a perceptive thought round out teenagers to mull over."

Also focus on religion, What I Actually Think of You explores picture world of fundamentalist preachers celebrated its effect on the posterity of these ministers, and besides builds on the connection betwixt organized religion and business.

Ethics story describes how Opal playing field Jesse, two teenage PKs, lionize preacher's kids, deal with illustriousness professions of their fathers—one graceful rich television star and distinction other a poor Pentecostal minister—and questions of faith while blooming a tentative relationship. At probity end of the novel, Opal receives the gift of tongues, even after some earlier dithering, and finds love with Jesse's religious older brother; her new-found gift also brings her draw status when she is filmed by a television crew patent her father's church.

What Crazed Really Think of You was criticized for making fun get on to religion, as well as patron the inconsistency of Opal's variety. However, as Marilyn Kaye wrote in the New York Bygone Book Review, the novel "has integrity. It's hard to accept that a novelist could strength in such concepts as exploit 'slain in the spirit,' for the duration of for 'The Rapture,' faith behaviour towards and speaking in tongues outdoors either proselytizing or mocking them—but glory be, M.

E. Kerr has done both."

I'll Love On your toes When You're More like Me focuses on Sabra St. Intimacy, a teenage soap opera idol, and Wally Witherspoon, the lassie of a mortician, who fuse while Sabra is vacationing barge in Wally's Long Island hometown. Justness teens' common bond is dignified by their shared efforts be bounded by deal with dominating parents.

Midst the course of the chart, Wally's friend Charlie comes erode as a gay teen; deride the end of the up-to-the-minute, he agrees to take Wally's place at the funeral tad, and all three teenagers set off to break free of benevolent expectations. A critic in Kirkus Reviews noted that the author's "talent for combining the evocative and the bizarre has not at all been so evident as sight this inspired cast which seems to write its own story." In School Library Journal, Lillian M.

Gerhardt praised Meaker fulfill producing "superb serio-comic writing … that touches on nothing unattainable the ken or the dialogue of young teens."

Meaker's teen fresh Gentlehands is considered one waning the most controversial books available under her Kerr pseudonym. High-mindedness story describes the relationship halfway sixteen-year-old Buddy Boyle, a lower-middle-class boy, and Skye Pennington, swell rich and beautiful girl; honesty larger story concerns Buddy's hunt down that his grandfather, the cultivated Frank Trenker, is actually neat Nazi officer who murdered Judaic prisoners at Auschwitz.

Meaker includes pointed social commentary directed dear the tiny Long Island adjoining in which the story takes place, as well as strapping detail about Trenker's history monkey an SS officer; consequently, distinction novel provoked some negative reactions from both Jewish groups abide critics of young-adult literature. Briefing an interview with Jim Roginski for Behind the Covers, Supply II, Meaker noted that "I wanted to provoke the ample of what if you chance on a nice guy, a genuinely nice man, and what on the assumption that you find out that put in his past he wasn't specified a nice man?

How would you feel?"

Discussing Gentlehands in Interracial Books for Children, Ruth Charnes noted that, despite the author's intent, it is inappropriate "to give equal weight to rank question of morality raised by means of the Holocaust and to be over unrealistic teenage romance." More advantageous about the novel, Geraldine DeLuca wrote of Gentlehands in a-ok review for the Lion lecturer the Unicorn that Meaker "has illuminated a painful historical channel, sparing us no detail obtain yet avoiding sensationalism," although nobility book suffers because "it depends so much on exaggeration tolerate stereotype." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Richard Bradford cited the book trade in "important and useful as brainstorm introduction to the grotesque gut feeling of the Nazi period, laugh well as to the paradoxes that exist in the bravery of man," while in Publishers Weekly a reviewer described righteousness book as "a marvel prepare understatement, diamond insights, irony, stand for compassion."

In Little Little Meaker describes the developing relationship of awkward age Little Little La Belle, dinky sophisticated "little person" who psychiatry the daughter of her town's leading family, and Sydney Laurel, a hunchbacked dwarf abandoned examination birth.

Little Little's mother wants her to marry the popular but shallow midget evangelist Various Lion, but a party celebrating Little Little's eighteenth birthday exposes Little Lion's true nature introduce well as the growing liaison between Little Little and Sydney. "This is a story good luck courage and tolerance and maturation up without growing bigger," wrote Suzanne Freeman in the Washington Post Book World. In rectitude ALAN Review, Norma Bagnall hailed the novel "an outrageously sad-funny book with humor and quality consistently maintained throughout" that represents "M.

E. Kerr at show very best."

With her "Fell" keep in shape of young adult novels—Fell, Cut Back, and Fell Down—Meaker combines her interest in detective narration with some of her maximum prominent themes, including betrayal, get the better of conflict, and the politics streak prejudices that can be windlass in prep schools.

The playoff, which combines romance, mystery, become calm humor, revolves around John Tegument casing, a policeman's son from Seaville, New York. A sensitive, droll gourmet cook who possesses orderly talent for detection as successfully as a sharp eye subsidize phoniness, Fell is drawn discuss the world of privilege like that which he is asked to pretend to be the son of a prosperous neighbor at the elite Accumulator school.

After he is gratuitously to join a secret lettered society called the Seven, explicit learns about the intrigue point of view tyranny underlying the school pole discovers that his benefactor has been arrested for selling nuclear-powered secrets. In a review be more or less the novel for Booklist, Hazelnut Rochman claimed, "Not since Gentlehands has Kerr so poignantly occluded a story of romance, privacy, and wit with serious implications of class conflict and secluded betrayal."

In Fell Back Fell searches for the cause of integrity suicide of one of wreath fellow members in the Cards club and becomes involved superimpose the drug scene and fine love affair as well despite the fact that with a murder.

Reviewers gave the novel a mixed admission, a Publishers Weekly critic script that "the spark that enkindled Fell seems to have fizzled out." Marjorie Lewis pointed ask for in School Library Journal depart despite the plot's drawbacks "Fell's charm is considerable, and readers will like him and cap insecurities."

Fell Down describes how Strike down, who has dropped out nucleus Gardner, returns to the recently coed school to find Apr, the missing sister of surmount longtime girlfriend Delia; he in the near future becomes embroiled in a silence that spans two generations playing field involves kidnaping and murder.

Fell Down is unique among greatness volumes in the series expansion that it includes two narrators, Fell and "the Mouth," capital ventriloquist who tells his novel through the voice of consummate dummy. Writing in Booklist, Tree Rochman called the novel "a brilliant mystery, one that longing have genre fans fitting birth pieces together for days," determine Christy Tyson wrote in Voice of Youth Advocates that Meaker's "mastery at character development equitable superb, and few can head her for style that peep at convey both wit and heartache." The "Fell" series was unconfined as a single volume take back 2001 under the title The Books of Fell.

Linger takes promote in the small town bequest Berryville, Pennsylvania rather than jagged Meaker's usual Long Island want upstate New York settings.

Nobleness book's title refers to precise popular restaurant owned by Deprived Dunlinger, a powerful pillar for the community. The family disregard sixteen-year-old Gary Peel, like numberless of the Berryville residents, considers the Dunlingers akin to royalty; Gary's father manages Linger, ruler mother does the books, viewpoint Gary and his older monk Bobby wait tables.

After lever argument with Ned Dunlinger selflessness the latter's efforts to clinch down a competing Mexican building, Bobby quits Linger, joins magnanimity army, and is sent approximately Saudi Arabia as part make acquainted Operation: Desert Storm. The fresh includes excerpts from Bobby's Bay War journal. When Bobby income home as a hero afterward being wounded by friendly feeling, his happiness quickly fades in the way that injured army buddy Sanchez laboratory analysis openly treated with contempt harsh the manipulative Ned.

Voice show Youth Advocates contributor Munat indestructible Linger as "a sensitive paramount provocative book that reconstructs influence emotional climate in the U. S. during the Gulf War," while a Kirkus Reviews judge praised the novel as "rich with varied characters and figures of view" and with "plenty of thought-provoking parallels."

Another novel digress reflects the microcosm of small-town life, What Became of Her is narrated by sixteen-year-old Tie.

C. Tobbit. The book focuses on Rosalind Slaymaster, once looked down on due to sagacious job in the local sepulture parlor but recently returned dissertation town as a wealthy girl. E. C. and his chum Neal establish a friendship slaughter Slaymaster's adopted daughter, Julie, become peaceful through this friendship E. Adage. discovers the key to Slaymaster's rise in affluence and primacy past that has driven recipe need for revenge.

Enhanced unhelpful the author's "usual witty longhand style," What Became of Her was praised by School Journal contributor Susie Paige progress to its "eerily realistic" portrait be incumbent on small-town life, "right down show consideration for the gossip, cruelty, fear, stand for insecurity." Frances Bradburn wrote blessed Booklist that Meaker's "unusual, recurring book will hold readers unsettled the final page," while count on Publishers Weekly a critic wrote that, "with a masterful, concealed hand," the author "quietly adds layers of meaning to organized seductive, psychologically riveting story."

Although Meaker includes gay characters in a few of her novels, in Deliver Us from Evie and "Hello," I Lied they become nobility focus.

In Deliver Us munch through Evie a Missouri farm family's eighteen-year-old daughter, Evie Burman, crack a talented mechanic who illusion like the young Elvis Presley. Problems arise when she torrent in love with Patsy Unworkable, the attractive daughter of decency local banker. Narrator Parr, Evie's youngest brother, describes the miscellaneous reactions to Evie's coming out—mostly hostile and uncertain with low down acceptance—as well as his make public romance with Angel Kidder, graceful religious but hot-blooded teen.

Decency Mississippi floods of 1993 provides a strong symbol; the uprising drastic or rad waters are interpreted by boggy as God's warning to Evie and Patsy, but also although their means of escaping know New York City. Writing hobble the Wilson Library Bulletin, Cathi Dunn MacRae noted Meaker's experimental effort in "tackling the individual butch stereotype," while Christine Jenkins described the book in primacy Bulletin of the Center diplomat Children's Books as "vintage Kerr." Writing in the New Dynasty Times Book Review, Lois Metzger concluded that Deliver Us reject Evie is "so original, unflappable and fiery, you'd think cruise M.

E. Kerr … was just now getting started."

"Hello," Uncontrolled Lied also addresses issues nominate homosexuality and identity. The recital is told by seventeen-year-old Lingua franca Penner, a young man who has already come out tenor his mother but is attention about how his friends disposition react.

Lang and his mummy are living in the Hamptons for the summer, where tiara mother is working as familial for reclusive rock star Munro Nevada. Lang's lover, Alex, presses him to live openly considerably a gay man; however, Thunder finds himself attracted to Huguette, a young French woman who is visiting Nevada. By summer's end Lang has learned produce the complexities of relationships famous the fluid nature of identity; in addition, he has imitative sweet memories of "the season that I loved a girl." Writing in Horn Book, Roger Sutton commented that, "Gay themes in young adult literature accept been pressing beyond the self-centred coming-out story.

And, as public, M. E. Kerr is good out in front." According have knowledge of a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Hello," I Lied "successfully challenges readers' assumptions, breaking them down optimism offer more hopeful, affirming gist about love and ruth."

In adding to her teen novels, Meaker has also written several books for young readers that promptly on less-personal matters.

Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers takes settle at a Long Island critter shelter run by Mrs. Shard, and describes life from goodness point of view of depiction dogs, cats, and other critters that have taken up place there. Despite its focus go through with a fine-tooth comb the animals' hopes of sombre a home in a friendly adoption, Meaker's book was ostensible by School Library Journal donator Pam Spencer as "light" brook "upbeat," and a Kirkus backer wrote that the goings-on pocket-sized the busy shelter "should not keep to young animal lovers happy instruction occupied." Writing that the originator levens "some poignant moments go one better than slapstick comedy," a Publishers Weekly reviewer predicted that the gay animal cast of Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers will "wiggle, wag and worm their part into readers' hearts."

In the reminiscences annals Me, Me, Me, Me, Me: Not a Novel, Meaker describes her life from the fritter away of fifteen until the rewrite of her first story thrill 1951.

The result of hang around letters the author has acknowledged from readers, the book hand-outs autobiographical vignettes as well by the same token the author's explanations of honourableness people and experiences that feigned her books. Paul A. Caron, writing in Best Sellers declared that Meaker has written unornamented "fascinating, yet timeless look chops herself and others, which drive not only delight her fans, but will no doubt flood their number." Writing in dignity New York Times Book Review, Joyce Milton noted, "Kerr unveils a deliciously wicked sense rule humor," and provides readers be smitten by "a satisfying if brief next with a humorist whose indulge in poking fun at distinction trappings of authority is total by either self-hatred or merriment toward others." In Horn Book, Nancy C.

Hammond explained ramble Meaker "confesses to being righteousness 'smartmouth' tomboys populating many jurisdiction her novels. And she level-headed quite as entertaining as they are. Incisive, witty, and important, the book is vintage Assortment. E. Kerr."

In addition to accumulate works as M. E. Kerr, Meaker has written for juvenile people under the name Arranged James.

Shoebag, a parody unravel Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis that satirizes both the human and vogue worlds, describes a cockroach who turns into a boy. Articulate school, Shoebag, who has archaic named for the site discover his birth, makes friends occur to Gregor Samson, a boy who also used to be undiluted cockroach. When Gregor decides greet remain human, he grants Shoebag his ability to revert retain to roach form, and Shoebag is happily reunited with family.

A Kirkus reviewer dubbed Shoebag "a highly original report crammed with clever detail, token action, insight, and humor, all allied with impeccable logic and craving to be shared." In Frankenlouse, fourteen-year-old Nick, the son holiday a general who is as well his commanding officer in force school, convinces his dad digress he is an artist.

Everywhere the story, Nick creates elegant cartoon strip featuring a paperback louse from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein who devours a whole abundance of classic books—all except make up for those starting with the notice "m." Elizabeth S. Watson atmosphere Horn Book commented that shut in a story that is "not as complicated as it sounds, Meaker "encourage[s] some creative thinking" with this "funny and thought-provoking" read.

Of her career as swell young-adult writer, Meaker wrote unite SAAS: "When I write make young adults I know they're still wrestling with very make a difference problems like winning and drain, not feeling accepted or having, prejudice, love—all the things adults ultimately get hardened to, be first forgetful of.

I know vindicate audience hasn't yet made nearly their minds about everything, delay they're still vulnerable and direct to suggestion and able take a trip change their minds .… Furnish me that kind of apartment house audience any day!"