Wendy Mass

Wendy Mass (born April 22, 1967), is an author of young-adult novels and children's books.

Her most successful book was A Mango-Shaped Space which won the American Library Association (ALA) Schneider Family Book Award for Middle School in 2004.

Tamar Halpern adapted Wendy Mass's book Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life for a feature film and also directed.

Early life

Born in Livingston, New Jersey, Mass's favorite subjects in school were reading and writing. Wendy worked at town libraries and ghostwrote her friends' college applications. As a child she would compete with friends to see who could read the most books; this helped develop her writing skills. Her first career vision was to be an astronaut. Mass's first story, co-written by her two siblings when she was in junior high, starred a cat that somehow turned into a goat and destroyed her neighborhood. She also wrote a non-fiction story about a zoo which won a prize in an 8th grade writing contest.

In high school, Mass worked at local public libraries and continued to hone her writing skills. She took writing classes and decided on writing for her career.