Wendy Mass

Wendy Mass is an award winning author of children's books. Her most successful book was "A Mango Shaped Space" which won The Schneider Family Book Award in 2003. she has also written the book Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life. She was born on January 17, 1967, and grew up in Livingstone, New Jersey. She also won the Peoples' Choice Award for the same book. Wendy Mass grew up in a small town in New Jersey. As a child Wendys' favorite subjects in school were always Reading and Writing. As a child Wendy would love competing on who reads the most books with her best friends, Wendy did it just for fun, but that however turned her into a writer. Wendys' first story cowritten by her two siblings was starring her pet that somehow turned into a goat and destroyed the neighborhood. It was a junior high story, and it was just the beginning of Masses' career. In high school Mass spent most of her time working at local public libraries and continued on working on her writing skills through high school. She was taking writing classes at her school, and she was now sure that writing was what she wanted to do. Mass currently lives in New Jersey with her 3 year old twins Griffin and Chloe, her husband Mike, and he very small and cute cat Zoey, as of October 1,2008.

College years

As an English Major at Tufts University, Wendy continued on working her hardest for the best. Mass graduated and moved to Los Angeles where she tried every kind of writing business there was, a literary agent, television casting company, editor of a magazine, she even became a script reader for a film producer, but Wendy wanted more, something that would inspire preteens teens and adults as well. After thinking things over Mass decided that what she wanted to do more than anything was to write books for children, teens, and adults. She moved back to her hometown in New Jersey and worked as a book editor for New York City and Connecticut. After six months Mass tried to get her first book published, unfortunately after many tries with the result of being ignored and rejected by uninterested book publishers, Wendy decided to start out her career with educational books for teens, and later after being discovered she would begin doing what she enjoyed the most, writing children's fiction books.

Honors and awards

Over the next six years, Mass wrote eight successful, educational books for teens. Mass won the Schneider Family Book Award for her children's fiction book A Mango Shaped Space in 2003. She won the American Library Association Award {best books for the teen age selection}, New York Public and New York Public Library Best Books for the Teen Age designation, Peoples' Choice Award, Great Lakes Book Award and Michigan State award.

Books Written by Wendy Mass Nonfiction Stonehenge,Lucent Books 1998 Teen Drug Abuse, Lucent Books 1998 Women's Rights, Lucent Books 1998 Readings on Night, Greenhaven Press 2000

Great Authors of Children's' Literature, Lucent Books 2001 God and Goddesses, Lucent Books 2002

John Cabot: Early Explorer, Enslow 2004 Ray Bradbury: Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Enslow 2004

Halloween, unknown 2004

Fiction Getting a Clue: Tammy Silhouette Books 1996 The Bad Hair Day {picture book}, Longmeadow Press 1996 A Mango Shaped Space, Little Brown 2003

Leap Day Little Brown 2004

Rapunzel:The one with all the hair, Scholastic 2005

jeremy fink and the meaning of life Heaven Looks A Lot Like The Mall [Little, Brown] 2008