Margins
School Dazed book cover
School Dazed
2016
First Published
3.72
Average Rating
272
Number of Pages

Part of Series

School is in session as celebrated authors share their real-life academic experiences and turn them into fiction! To some kids, school means homework, bus rides, or band practice. To others it means bullies, tough teachers, or pranking the substitute. In this second collection in the Been There, Done That series, authors describe a standout story from their school days. As with the first anthology, each author will contribute a narrative nonfiction account that serves as the inspiration for an original fictional short story. The contributing award-winning and best-selling middle-grade authors include Holly Goldberg Sloan, Kelly Starling Lyons, Tommy Greenwald, Wendy Mass, Bruce Hale, Jacqueline West, Ellen Yeomans, Vince Evans, Nate Evans, Sarah Prineas, Steve Sheinkin, Shaun Hutchinson, Don Tate, Varian Johnson, Howard Cruse, Meg Medina, and Bruce Coville.

Avg Rating
3.72
Number of Ratings
25
5 STARS
32%
4 STARS
20%
3 STARS
40%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
4%
goodreads

Authors

Holly Goldberg Sloan
Holly Goldberg Sloan
Author · 9 books

Holly Goldberg Sloan was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and spent her childhood living in California, the Netherlands, Istanbul, Washington, DC, and Oregon (where she graduated from high school). She wrote the screenplay for Angels in the Outfield and directed The Big Green, as well as a number of other successful family feature films. The mother of two sons, Holly lives with her husband (the writer/illustrator Gary Rosen) in Santa Monica, California. I'll Be There was her debut novel. Her next book, Counting By 7s, was Amazon's best novel of the year for middle grade. Her book Just Call My Name is a follow up to I'll Be There and takes place several months after the ending of the first novel. Appleblossom the Possum was written by Sloan and Illustrated by Rosen and comes out of Sloan's love for Charlotte's Web. Her next novel will be published in January of 2017 from Dial/Penguin Random House.

Howard Cruse
Howard Cruse
Author · 4 books
Howard Cruse was an American alternative cartoonist known for the exploration of gay themes in his comics.
Vince Evans
Author · 2 books

Vince Evans started his artistic training by copying his big brother Nate’s drawings. Vince has worked for numerous comic and book companies, and has won the Spectrum Silver Award for excellence in comic art. Existing solely on a diet of instant coffee and kidney beans, Vince lives with his beautiful wife Laurie and has two dogs that have been trained to beg editors to extend deadlines and bark when he falls asleep while working.

Shaun David Hutchinson
Shaun David Hutchinson
Author · 20 books
Shaun is a major geek and all about nerdy shenanigans. He is the author of many queer books for young adults. Find out more information at shaundavidhutchinson.com. He currently lives in Seattle and watches way too much Doctor Who.
Bruce Hale
Bruce Hale
Author · 51 books

A serious book addict, Bruce wanted to be a children's book author since he was in 4th grade (right after he got over wanting to be a pirate, Tarzan, and Daniel Boone). Today he's the author-illustrator of over 70 seriously funny books for kids, so some dreams do come true. The Malted Falcon, one of his Chet Gecko Mysteries series, was an Edgar Award finalist, and Murder, My Tweet won a Little D Award for Juvenile Humor Writing. Bruce has written everything from picture books and easy readers, to graphic novels and novels. Bruce's recent Monstertown Mysteries series blends horror and humor, based on his childhood love of monster movies. His other series include Class Pets, about the secret lives of classroom pets, and the forthcoming Outerspace Mystery Pizza Club books, due in 2024. A Fulbright Scholar (in Storytelling), Bruce is also a popular speaker, both in the U.S. and internationally. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and knuckleheaded dog Riley. When he's not writing or reading, you may find him hiking, kickboxing, or singing with a latin-jazz band called Mezcal Martini.

Nate Evans
Nate Evans
Author · 9 books
Nate Evans wanted to be a secret agent, a firefighter, or a magician when he was a kid. But he also loved to read and write, and he grew up to be the author of more than thirty-five children’s books, including the New York Times bestsellers Ponyella and The Jellybeans and the Big Dance, both cowritten with Laura Numeroff, and the series Humpty Dumpty Jr.: Hardboiled Detective, an IndieBound “Inspired Recommendation for Kids.” He also illustrated Laura Numeroff”s 10-Step Guide to Living with Your Monster, among others. You can visit him online at www.nateevans.com.
Wendy Mass
Wendy Mass
Author · 34 books
Wendy Mass is the author of thirty novels for young people, including A Mango-Shaped Space, which was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award, Leap Day, the Twice Upon a Time fairy tale series, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall, the Willow Falls, Space Taxi and Candymakers series. Wendy wrote the storyline for an episode of the television show Monk, entitled "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theatre," which aired during the show's second season. She tells people her hobbies are hiking and photography, but really they're collecting candy bar wrappers and searching for buried treasure with her metal detector. Wendy lives with her family in New Jersey.
Steve Sheinkin
Steve Sheinkin
Author · 23 books

From: http://stevesheinkin.com/about/ I was born in Brooklyn, NY, and my family lived in Mississippi and Colorado before moving back to New York and settling in the suburbs north of New York City. As a kid my favorite books were action stories and outdoor adventures: sea stories, searches for buried treasure, sharks eating people… that kind of thing. Probably my all-time favorite was a book called Mutiny on the Bounty, a novel based on the true story of a famous mutiny aboard a British ship in the late 1700s. I went to Syracuse University and studied communications and international relations. The highlight of those years was a summer I spent in Central America, where I worked on a documentary on the streets of Nicaragua. After college I moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for an environmental group called the National Audubon Society. Then, when my brother Ari graduated from college a few years later, we decided to move to Austin, Texas, and make movies together. We lived like paupers in a house with a hole in the floor where bugs crawled in. We wrote some screenplays, and in 1995 made our own feature film, a comedy called A More Perfect Union (filing pictured below), about four young guys who decide to secede from the Union and declare their rented house to be an independent nation. We were sure it was going to be a huge hit; actually we ended up deep in debt. After that I moved to Brooklyn and decided to find some way to make a living as a writer. I wrote short stories, screenplays, and worked on a comic called The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey. In 2006, after literally hundreds of rejections, my first Rabbi Harvey graphic novel was finally published. Meanwhile, I started working for an educational publishing company, just for the money. We’d hire people to write history textbooks, and they’d send in their writing, and it was my job to check facts and make little edits to clarify the text. Once in a while I was given the chance to write little pieces of textbooks, like one-page biographies or skills lessons. “Understanding Bar Graphs” was one of my early works. The editors noticed that my writing was pretty good. They started giving me less editing to do, and more writing. Gradually, I began writing chapters for textbooks, and that turned into my full-time job. All the while, I kept working on my own writing projects. In 2008 I wrote my last textbook. I walked away, and shall never return. My first non-textbook history book was King George: What Was His Problem? – full of all the stories about the American Revolution that I was never allowed to put into textbooks. But looking back, I actually feel pretty lucky to have spent all those years writing textbooks. It forced me to write every day, which is great practice. And I collected hundreds of stories that I can’t wait to tell. These days, I live with my wife, Rachel, and our two young kids in Saratoga Springs, New York. We’re right down the road from the Saratoga National Historical Park, the site of Benedict Arnold’s greatest – and last – victory in an American uniform. But that’s not why I moved here. Honestly.

Tommy Greenwald
Tommy Greenwald
Author · 22 books

Tommy Greenwald's book GAME CHANGER has been named an Amazon Best Book Of The Month, a 2019 YALSA Top Ten Pick for Reluctant Readers, and a Junior Library Guild Premier Selection. Tommy is also the author of the CRIMEBITERS, CHARLIE JOE JACKSON and PROJECT Z series, among many other books for children. Day-job-wise, Tommy is the Co-Founder of Spotco Advertising, an entertainment advertising agency in New York City, and the lyricist and co-bookwriter of JOHN & JEN, an off-Broadway musical. To read woefully outdated information about Tommy, visit tommygreenwald.com. (To send an email telling him how much you liked whatever book it was that you just read, holla at tommy@tommygreenwald.com.)

Kelly Starling Lyons
Author · 28 books

Kelly Starling Lyons is an award-winning author whose 17 titles for children span easy readers, picture books, chapter books, fiction, nonfiction, and series. For more than a decade, Lyons has been creating inspiring books that center Black heroes, celebrate family, friendship and heritage and show all children the storyteller they hold inside. Her acclaimed titles include Going Down Home with Daddy, Sing a Song: How Lift Every Voice & Sing Inspired Generations, Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon, Tiara's Hat Parade and the Jada Jones chapter book series. Her new easy reader series with illustrator Nina Mata, Ty's Travels, debuts September 1. The first book, All Aboard, earned a starred Kirkus review. Lyons counts Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, Best of the Year and state award lists, Junior Library Guild selections, a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor among the accolades her books have received. Two of her books, Hope's Gift and Going Down Home with Daddy, have represented the states of North Carolina and Georgia, respectively, at the National Book Festival's Parade of the States. Lyons is a founding member of The Brown Bookshelf, a team dedicated to raising awareness of Black children's book creators, a Raleigh-Durham co-ambassador for The Authors Guild, and a teaching artist who visits schools, libraries, conferences and festivals nationwide. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and children where she facilitates a book club for boys that salutes literary treasures from Black authors and illustrators of today and the past. Learn more at www.kellystarlinglyons.com.

Mike Winchell
Mike Winchell
Author · 3 books
Mike Winchell is a veteran educator with a master's degree in educational leadership. He is the creator & editor of the BEEN THERE, DONE THAT anthology series, and the award-winning author of the young adult narrative nonfiction book, THE ELECTRIC WAR: EDISON, TESLA, WESTINGHOUSE, AND THE RACE TO LIGHT THE WORLD. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two children. mikewinchellbooks.com
Sarah Prineas
Sarah Prineas
Author · 19 books

Coming in April 2021 from Philomel, Trouble in the Stars! It's a middle grade science fiction adventure about a shapeshifter kid. And Dragonfell is out in paperback in April 2020. Happy reading! My website: www.sarah-prineas.com

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