Finding Wonder Woman
Charlesbridge Publishing | Forthcoming fall 2009
Middle-Grade Novel
Inspiration
I was super-lucky to meet the late and great Paul Zindel, renowned author of The Pigman, several years ago. He commented off-handedly that all his books were autobiographical, and a friend of mine asked him if his family got angry with him for writing about them.
“Yes,” he replied. “They do get angry with me. But then they ask me who's playing them in the movie.”
Well, that was all the permission I needed to mine my own childhood! Like my main character, I grew up on Staten Island in the 1980s. I also hated gym, had endless trouble getting my hair to do what I wanted, watched too much TV, and was born in Israel.
But that's where truth ends and fiction begins. One of the greatest benefits of being a writer, in fact, is being able to re-tell, and maybe even re-live within the pages of a book, one's past!
Summary
Roxanne, thirteen years old and born in Israel, wants nothing more than to be American. As American as Wonder Woman and the All-American families she sees on TV — The Brady Bunch, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie — which Roxanne prefers to real life.
But when new neighbors move into the house next door — called “The Cursed House” because something terrible always happens to anyone who lives there — Roxanne finally learns the true meaning of fitting in.