Codell biography

When I was eight years old, one of my teachers got me a gig writing columns for a small independent newspaper, In These Timeswhere I was sent to review movies from a kid's-eye view. I remember there was a famous dog actor named "Benjy," and I got to interview his owner. I thought that was very exciting. I also enjoyed writing poetry and plays, and sometimes dreamed of being a sportswriter.

When I was around twelve, I started an underground newspaper at my school and I got in a lot of trouble. That was exciting, too. When I was a teenager, I had about two hundred pen pals and was often absent from school so I could write to them. I always found writing non-fiction to be easier than writing fiction, because it's pretty "cut and dry.

What influenced your writing while you were growing up?

Codell biography

Comic books influenced my love for dialogue and strong characters, and lyricists from old showtunes like Frank Loesser, Jerome Kern, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin made me see the crazy things that language could do. My parents and grandparents were all gifted writers and readers who had strong opinions about the potential of words, and I was always encouraged, which I see now was a codell biography blessing.

I also was lucky to have a marvelous teacher in high school named Mrs. Robinson who showed me how to organize my ideas. What are your hobbies besides writing? Besides being with my family, my favorite thing to do is read. I have a personal collection of about 8, children's books that took fifteen years to build, which I someday hope to turn into a children's reading room and teacher center.

In the work, readers are introduced to Sahara Jones, a Special Needs student who spends much of her time writing secret letters to her absent father. When Sahara's mother objects to her daughter's educational program, the youngster is reassigned to Madame Poitier's fifth-grade classroom. According to Booklist critic Stephanie Zvirin, Sahara's "new teacher is just what she needs to build confidence and set her on a path to becoming a writer.

Miss Pointy comes across as "a real teacher, plagued by worries and ego and a sharp tongue," observed Horn Book reviewer Robin Smith, who added that "on one unforgettable day, Miss Pointy proves to everyone in the room that Sahara is indeed a writer. When the students in a fifth-grade classroom asked Codell to tell them a story, she tried—unsuccessfully—to recall an incident from her childhood.

As Codell explained on her Web site, "It was surprisingly difficult to recollect a story off of the top of my head. I promised I would think about it and see if I could come up with anything else. Set in the late s, Sing a Song of Tuna Fish provides a look at Codell's upbringing in a working-class Chicago neighborhood. The author tells of her unhappy stay at an unstructured alternative school, a ferocious snowstorm that shut down the city, and her mother's plan to egg an expensive car that was blocking a fire hydrant.

Remarked Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper, "Codell's small, intimate work is the very model of what this kind of book should be. Diary of a Fairy Godmother was borne of the author's dissatisfaction with the story of Cinderella. Why didn't she ask for a wand? Set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America, the tyrant boss of a waistcoat factory is visited by three spirits on the last night of Hanukkah, delivering "Scroogemacher" to scenes of battling Macabees, new immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, New York's tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and a vision of his grandchildren keeping traditions in the face of assimilation.

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