Spinelli, Jerry 1941-

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SPINELLI, Jerry 1941-

PERSONAL: Born February 1, 1941, in Norristown, PA; son of Louis A. (a printer) and Lorna Mae (Bigler) Spinelli; married Eileen Mesi (a writer), May 21, 1977; children: Kevin, Barbara, Jeffrey, Molly, Sean, Ben. Education: Gettysburg College, A.B., 1963; Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1964; attended Temple University, 1964. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, country music, travel, pet rats.

ADDRESSES: Home—331 Melvin Rd., Phoenixville, PA 19460. Agent—Ms. Ray Lincoln, Ray Lincoln Literary Agency, 7900 Old York Rd., 107-B, Elkins Park, PA 19117.

CAREER: Chilton Company (magazine publisher), Radnor, PA, editor, 1966-89; writer. Military service: U.S. Naval Reserve, 1966-72.

MEMBER: Philadelphia Writers Organization.

AWARDS, HONORS: Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, 1990, Newbery Medal, American Library Association, 1991, D. C. Fisher Award, 1992, and Pacific Northwest Readers' Choice Award, 1993, all for Maniac Magee; Carolyn Field Award, 1991; South Carolina Children's Book Award, 1993, for Fourth Grade Rats; California Young Reader medal, 1993, for There's a Girl in My Hammerlock; Carolyn Field Award, Josette Frank Award, and Newbery honor book, American Library Association, all 1998, all for Wringer; awards for Crash include School Library Journal Best Books citation, Maud Hart Lovelace Award, Virginia Young Readers' Choice Award, and Maryland Children's Middle School Book Award; Drexel University Children's Literature citation, Milner Award, and Anne V. Zarrow award, all for body of work; named Outstanding Pennsylvania Author, 1992; D.H.L., Western Maryland College, 2000.

WRITINGS:

YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

Space Station Seventh Grade, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1982.

Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush?, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1984.

Night of the Whale, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1985.

Jason and Marceline, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1986.

Dump Days, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1988.

Maniac Magee, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1990.

The Bathwater Gang, illustrated by Meredith Johnson, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1990.

There's a Girl in My Hammerlock, Silver Burdett Press, 1990.

Fourth Grade Rats, illustrated by Paul Casale, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1991.

The Bathwater Gang Gets Down to Business, illustrated by Johnson, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992.

Crash, Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

Wringer, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

Loser, Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Stargirl, Knopf (New York, NY), 2000, revised edition with related readings, EMC/Paradigm (St. Paul, MN), 2003.

"SCHOOL DAZE" SERIES

School Daze: Report to the Principal's Office, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1991, published as Report to the Principal's Office!, 1991.

Who Ran My Underwear Up the Flagpole?, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1992.

Do the Funky Pickle, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1992.

Picklemania, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1993.

Tooter Pepperday, Random House (New York, NY), 1995.

The Library Card, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1997.

Blue Ribbon Blues: A Tooter Tale, illustrated by Donna Nelson, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

OTHER

In My Own Words (autobiography), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

Knots in My Yo-Yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.

My Daddy and Me (for children), Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Our Roots Grow Deeper Than We Know: Pennsylvania Writers—Pennsylvania Life, edited by Lee Gutkind, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985; and Noble Pursuits, edited by Virginia A. Arnold and Carl B. Smith, Macmillan, 1988. Work also represented in anthologies, including Best Sports Stories of 1982, Dutton; and Connections (short stories), Dell.

SIDELIGHTS: Jerry Spinelli is "a master of those embarrassing, gloppy, painful and suddenly wonderful things that happen on the razor's edge between childhood and full-fledged adolescence," according to Deborah Churchman in the Washington Post Book World. Perhaps best known for his Newbery award-winning book, Maniac Magee, Spinelli is a noted teller of adolescent tales, recreating the teenage years with accuracy and humor. Popular with his young adult audience, Spinelli covers such controversial topics as racism and sex, writing in a youth-oriented style that sometimes brings him into conflict with parents who feel he is perhaps too realistic in his stories. Many critics, however, have noted that Spinelli presents adolescents as they are, suffering from acne and filled with pubescent curiosity. John Keller, writing in Horn Book, remarked: "Jerry has listened and observed, and, in language that is never self-consciously literary, he illuminates that rough magic children carry around with them."

Spinelli began his writing career with the novel Space Station Seventh Grade. Jason Herkimer, the protagonist, is a thirteen-year-old boy, curious about his maturing body, who spends his spare time building a model space station. Falling in love with a cheerleader is only one of Jason's learning experiences. He also struggles with pimples, copes with the death of a friend's brother, and tries to get along with his parents and stepfather. The issue of racism enters the story subtly through Jason's friend, Peter Kim, a Korean-American, and through an episode that takes place in an African-American neighborhood. Spinelli also deals with the role of women in society through Jason's relationship with Marceline McAllister, a classmate and fellow track team member. The story is told in Jason's voice, complete with his adolescent attitudes, humor, and vocabulary. While some critics called the language "crude" and Jason's behavior sometimes inappropriate, Ethel Twichell noted in Horn Book: "For those who view adolescence from a comfortable distance, the author has produced a truly funny book; those presently at the precarious stage may find Jason's hilarious adventures all too painfully recognizable."

"A blending of tall tale and actuality" is how Spinelli described his novel Maniac Magee to CA. Fiction and reality merge "to the point where it makes no difference which is which," but his lesson against racism comes across clearly. This award-winning novel features Jeffrey Lionel Magee, an orphan who earns the name "Maniac" through his extraordinary running speed, abrupt appearances, and talent for hitting baseballs. "Spinelli, in his best book to date, creates a provocative slice of life," proclaimed Deborah Abbott in Booklist. When Maniac Magee loses his parents at an early age, he is sent to live with his unloving aunt and uncle. At age eleven he decides to leave and ends up in the segregated town of Two Mills. Maniac Magee lives with both white and black families between brief periods of homelessness. New York Times Book Review contributor Alison Teal noted that "Spinelli grapples here with a racial tension rarely addressed in fiction for children in the middle grades." Presenting his tale in a manner that his readers will enjoy, Spinelli "brightens the story with exaggeration, humor, and melodrama," claimed Twichell.

In There's a Girl in My Hammerlock, Spinelli takes on another social issue—gender bias. Eighth-grader Maisie Potter, one of the school's best athletes, joins the wrestling team in an effort to get closer to Eric Delong, her crush. Once on the team, she faces opposition from both teammates and friends. But her stubborn streak and competitiveness carry her through the season, and her one date with Eric does not turn out as she had expected. A reviewer in Horn Book commented that "the action zips along . . . with plenty of lively, believable dialogue," noting that There's a Girl in My Hammerlock is "likely to spark some serious thinking about gender stereotypes."

While Maisie is able to overcome the peer pressure surrounding her, fourth-grader Suds Morton, the narrator of Fourth Grade Rats, is not as tough. When Suds's best friend, Joey Peterson, decides to live up to the rhyme—"Third grade angels! Fourth grade rats!"—he drags Suds into various mischief, like pulling firstgraders off their swings. Although Suds tries to fit in with his peers, he is more interested in Judy Billings than in causing trouble. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote that "rapid-fire dialogue and a hilarious string of episodes . . . unfold a story with a valuable message." Spinelli makes a statement about the hazards of peer pressure with his tale, and a reviewer in Horn Book noted: "The message is clear, but presented in a low-key and unobtrusive way that does not detract one whit from the fast-paced yarn."

The unlikely protagonist of Crash can best be described as a bully. John (Crash) Coogan is a star athlete whose competitive spirit extends in unsocial ways to picking on smaller students and intimidating the girl he is attracted to. Only his grandfather seems to bring out the more sensitive side of Crash; but even that bond is threatened by the boy's siblings, who also seek the old man's favor. The grandfather's debilitating stroke forces the boy to seek the help of others. "Without being preachy," a Publishers Weekly commentator said, "Spinelli packs a powerful moral wallop, leaving it to the pitch-perfect narration to drive home his point."

In a rural community, thousands of captured pigeons are released in the park to be shot as part of a fundraiser. Boys age ten are given the task of wringing the necks of those birds who have not yet died. "Sound unbelievable?" asked Hazel Rochman of Booklist. "It really happens in many parts of the country." Spinelli examined this practice through the eyes of a doubting boy in the novel Wringer, a Newbery honor book. As he is about to turn ten, Palmer longs to fit in with the rest of the boys but cannot reconcile himself to the violent act of the bird massacre, especially after he befriends a pigeon slated for death. "Moral choices lie at the center of Wringer," said an essayist for St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers. "Although the protagonist is young, he must make a decision many much older people find difficult, one that young adult readers facing peer pressure will readily recognize." "A world of children subject to its own rules and unanswerable to adult authority is starkly captured here," commented Horn Book contributor Roger Sutton.

In the novel Loser Spinelli "enters the consciousness of the social pariah," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. Grade-schooler Donald Zinkoff is an easily recognizable type: the boy who laughs inappropriately, trips over his own feet, and always raises his hand but never has the right answer. But there is more to Donald than the inevitable epithet "loser." He shrugs off the bullies' malice, shows remarkable sportsman-ship by giving away his first (and probably last) sports trophy to a depressed classmate, and pitches in during a search for a missing younger child. A writer for Kirkus Reviews labeled Loser "a masterful character portrait."

Another outsider—the title character of Stargirl—is a high-school bohemian whose unconventional name, appearance, and behavior bemuse her classmates but attract Leo, who wants to learn more about her. "By describing the girl through the eyes of a teen intermittently repulsed by and in love with her," a reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote, "Spinelli cunningly exposes her elusive qualities." Booklist's Ilene Cooper remarked that Stargirl is "engagingly written but overreaches." Sharon Grover of School Library Journal felt that Spinelli's prose "lapses into occasionally unfortunate flowery flights," but concluded that the story would still reach its audience of teen girls "who will understand how it feels to not quite fit the mold."

In Spinelli's first picture book, My Daddy and Me, a son anticipates his father's return from work by describing the things they like to do together, like taking make-believe car trips, wrestling on the floor, and baking cookies. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote, "The scenarios may not be new, but the warmth emanating from parent and child is comfortingly universal." A Kirkus Reviews critic commented, "The intensity and directness of feeling will strike a chord in young readers."

After telling the story of so many fictional creations, Spinelli turned the mirror to himself with two auto-biographies. The second, 1999's Knots in My Yo-Yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, focuses on the author's early years in Norristown, Pennsylvania. As a boy he heard World War II air-raid sirens, but the threat of war was overshadowed by such childhood pleasures as "twin Popsicles and Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, hightop Keds, . . . salamanders and snakes and candy cigarettes," as Spinelli remarked in the book.

To Peter Sieruta, "perhaps the autobiography's strongest achievement is its depiction of Jerry's continual growth." Writing for Horn Book, Sieruta continued: "Spinelli's writing is honest and immediate throughout, yet there are still moments when one questions the primary audience for the book." There are scenes "kids will love," the critic elaborated, "but only adults can fully appreciate [the author's] occasional nostalgic forays."

"Don't tell my English teachers," Spinelli wrote in the St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, "but not much planning goes into my novels. Oh, plenty of experience and imagination and hard work and such go into them, and I do jot down lots of notes, and I do have some idea where to start a story and maybe where to end it. But there's no outline telling me how to get from here to there, because I have found that there is no way to know what is inside the story until I am in there myself. In other words, the product and the process are pretty much the same thing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Children's Books and Their Creators, edited by Anita Silvey, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1995.

Children's Literature Review, Volume 26, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, second edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Speaking for Ourselves: Autobiographical Sketches by Notable Authors of Books for Young Adults, edited by Donald R. Gallo, National Council of Teachers of English (Urbana, IL), 1990.

Spinelli, Jerry, In My Own Words (autobiography), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

Spinelli, Jerry, Knots in My Yo-Yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1990, Deborah Abbott, review of Maniac Magee, p. 1902; May 1, 1995, Mary Harris Veeder, review of Tooter Pepperday, p. 1575; June 1, 1996, Ilene Cooper, review of Crash, p. 1724; February 1, 1997, Hazel Rochman, review of The Library Card, p. 942; September 1, 1997, Rochman, review of Wringer, p. 118; May 1, 1998, GraceAnne DeCandido, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, p. 1514; June 1, 2002, Cooper, review of Stargirl, p. 1883; March 1, 2003, review of My Daddy and Me, p. 1204.

Books for Keeps, July, 1999, review of Wringer, p. 24.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July, 1984, p. 213; May, 1996, review of Crash, p. 315; October, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 67; September, 1988, p. 21; September, 1990, p. 16; June, 1995, review of Tooter Pepperday, p. 359; March, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 257; July, 1998, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 414.

Carousel, summer, 1995, p. 22.

Children's Book & Play Review, March, 2001, review of Stargirl, p. 21.

Children's Book Review Service, April, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 107; December, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 48.

Children's Bookwatch, June, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 1.

Emergency Librarian, May, 1996, review of Crash, p. 43; November, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 52; January, 1998, review of Wringer, p. 50.

Horn Book, June, 1984, Ethel Twichell, review of Space Station Seventh Grade, pp. 343-344; March, 1987, p. 217; May, 1988, p. 355; July/August, 1991, pp. 433-436; September, 1991, review of Fourth Grade Rats, pp. 594, 599; September-October, 1995, Elizabeth Watson, review of Tooter Pepperday, p. 595; September-October, 1996, Maeve Visser Knoth, review of Crash, p. 600; March-April, 1997, Joan Hamilton, review of The Library Card, p. 204; September-October, 1997, Roger Sutton, review of Wringer, p. 581; January, 1999, Peter Sieruta, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 87; July, 2000, review of Stargirl, p. 465.

Horn Book Guide, fall, 1995, review of Tooter Pepperday, p. 292; fall, 1996, review of Crash, p. 297; fall, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 309; spring, 1998, review of Wringer, p. 81; fall, 1998, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 416; spring, 2001, review of Stargirl, p. 87.

Hungry Mind Review, winter, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 39.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, February, 1997, review of Crash, p. 407; September, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 81; December, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 323; November, 1998, review of Wringer, p. 239; October, 2001, review of Stargirl, p. 170.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1984, pp. 51-52; April 15, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 650; June 15, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 957; April 1, 2002, review of Loser, p. 499; March 15, 2003, review of My Daddy and Me, p. 479.

Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide, July, 1997, review of Crash, p. 11; September, 1998, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 38; November, 1998, review of The Library Card, p. 22; July, 1999, review of Crash, p. 5.

Learning, November, 1996, review of Crash, p. 31.

Magpies, March, 2001 review of Stargirl, p. 40.

New York Times Book Review, April 21, 1991, Alison Teal, review of Maniac Magee, p. 33; June 16, 1996, review of Crash, p. 33; August 17, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 19; November 16, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 52.

Observer (London, England), April 22, 1999, review of Wringer, p. 14; December 16, 2001, review of Stargirl, p. 17.

Parents' Choice, March, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 8.

Publishers Weekly, November 28, 1986, p. 78; April 29, 1988, p. 77; September 27, 1991, review of Fourth Grade Rats, p. 58; March 25, 1996, review of Crash, p. 84; February 10, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 84; June 2, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 72; April 6, 1998, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 79; June 26, 2000, review of Stargirl, p. 76; July 17, 2000, Jennifer Brown, "Homer on George Street" (author interview), p. 168; February 11, 2002, review of Loser, p. 188; February 17, 2003, review of My Daddy and Me, p. 73.

Reading Teacher, November, 1998, review of Wringer, p. 285; September, 2001, review of Stargirl, p. 214; November, 2001, review of Crash, p. 256.

School Librarian, November, 1997, review of Crash, p. 214; winter, 2001, review of Stargirl, p. 214.

School Library Journal, July, 1995, review of Tooter Pepperday, p. 82; June, 1996, review of Crash, p. 124; December, 1997, review of Wringer, p. 27; May, 1998, review of Blue Ribbon Blues, p. 126; June, 1998, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 170; August, 1998, review of Crash, p. 25; August, 2000, Sharon Grover, review of Stargirl, p. 190; May, 2002, Edward Sullivan, review of Loser, p. 160.

Social Education, May, 1999, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 7.

Times Educational Supplement, June 20, 1997, review of Crash, p. 7.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), May 12, 1996, review of Crash, p. 7.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 1997, review of Crash, p. 87; October, 1997, review of The Library Card, p. 248; February, 1998, review of Wringer, p. 366; December, 1998, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 386; February, 1999, review of Knots in My Yo-Yo String, p. 413; June, 2001, review of The Library Card, p. 99.

Washington Post Book World, January 13, 1985, p. 8; May 5, 1996, review of Crash, p. 14; January 12, 1997, review of Crash, p. 9.