WYSS, Thelma Hatch 1934-

PERSONAL: Born November 17, 1934, in Bancroft, ID; daughter of A. Wilder (a rancher) and Agatha Pratt (Van Orden) Hatch; married Lawrence Frederick Wyss (an interior designer), December 18, 1964; children: David Lawrence. Education: Brigham Young University, B.S., 1957; Vermont College, M.F.A., 1999.

ADDRESSES: Home—1119 Stansbury Way, Salt Lake City, UT 84108.

CAREER: Novelist and educator. Glamour (magazine), New York, NY, assistant production editor, 1959-60; high school teacher of English in Salt Lake City, UT, 1961-66.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best Books for Young Adults selection, American Library Association (ALA), 1989, Best Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers selection, ALA, 1989, and Top One Hundred Countdown: Best of the Best Books for Young Adults selection, 1994, all for Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel; Junior Library Guild selections, 1993, for A Stranger Here, and 2002, for Ten Miles from Winnemucca.

WRITINGS:

Star Girl, Viking (New York, NY), 1967.

Show Me Your Rocky Mountains!, Deseret Book Company (Salt Lake City, UT), 1982.

Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1988.

A Stranger Here, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.

Ten Miles from Winnemucca, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Thelma Hatch Wyss is the author of several young adult novels that have been praised for their humorous take on teen life. Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel reads like a journal, recounting seventeen-yearold Jake Callahan's observations as he shepherds six of his fellow students through weekday nights at a dumpy motel within commuting distance of their regional Idaho school. The novel was called "charming" by Wilson Library Bulletin reviewer Cathi MacRae, who also praised the narrator's "funny, irresistibly quotable voice" and Wyss's ability "to portray kids enjoying the challenge of making it on their own."

The author's native Idaho is again the setting for her 1993 novel A Stranger Here. This modern-day novel focuses on a sixteen-year-old girl named Jada Sinclair, a self-styled loner who believes she is different from everyone around her. During a summer away from school, she is sent to help an sickly aunt who lives on an Idaho ranch, and Jada occupies her spare time by cleaning the old house of years of accumulated dust and cobwebs, only to discover that the house also harbors something more intangible. Jada's summer romance with a departed spirit—a ghostly but handsome bomber pilot who met his death on the battlefields of World War II—gradually helps her grow in maturity and self-acceptance. As Doris A. Fong commented in her School Library Journal review, A Stranger Here is a more "delicate" work than Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, as it gradually exposes "plot and characters through nuance and implication" rather than an actionfilled plot and broad-brushed humor. Assuring potential readers that the novel is not a sentimental romance, Stephanie Zvirin explained in her Booklist review that Wyss spins a story containing a "mercurial combination of the real and the illusory, full of surprises and laced with wry comedy."

Ten Miles from Winnemucca is the title of Wyss's 2002 novel; it is also the Nevada home of the novel's protagonist, sixteen-year-old Marty Miller. At least it was his home, but now Marty's single mother married a wealthy man from Seattle and the Miller clan has relocated. Subsequently, Marty has to deal with not only a stepdad he dislikes but also a stepbrother whose shout of "get lost" convinces Marty to do just that. Hitting the road in his Jeep, Marty makes camp in Red Rock, Idaho, and starts a new life in a novel made credible courtesy of its spirited protagonist's "accessible and witty voice," according to Horn Book reviewer Susan P. Bloom. Sylvia V. Meisner praised Ten Miles from Winnemucca in her School Library Journal review, calling it "a pleasing, well-paced story" with "considerable reader appeal," while in Booklist, John Peters dubbed the novel "engaging" and added that Marty "has a knack for making friends, and that includes readers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1990, review of Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, p. 1697; May 1, 1993, Stephanie Zvirin, review of A Stranger Here, p. 1582; February 1, 2002, John Peters, review of Ten Miles from Winnemucca, p. 934.

Book Report, September-October, 1993, Susan Yallaly, review of A Stranger Here, p. 50.

Book World, March 3, 1968.

Horn Book, September-October, 1988, Ann A. Flowers, review of Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, p. 638; July-August, 2002, Susan P. Bloom, review of Ten Miles from Winnemucca, p. 475.

Journal of Reading, December, 1989, Carolyn Caywood, review of Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, p. 230.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2002, review of Ten Miles from Winnemucca, p. 192.

Publishers Weekly, March 11, 1988, review of Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, p. 106; February 8, 1993, review of A Stranger Here, p. 88; January 7, 2002, review of Ten Miles from Winnemucca, p. 66.

School Library Journal, March, 1988, Merilyn S. Burrington, review of Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel p. 217; May, 1993, Doris A. Fong, review of A Stranger Here, p. 130; June, 2002, Sylvia V. Meisner, review of Ten Miles from Winnemucca p. 150.

Wilson Library Bulletin, October, 1988, Cathi MacRae, review of Here at the Scenic-Vu Motel, p. 81.