User:Jmdeane1/Andrew Smith

Joshua Deane (rename me whatever, but it better start with J)
Evidently I'm long dead and hurt a bunch of people, which explains why I have this sense of crippling guilt and can't get the taste of pennies out of my mouth. But it's all good. Because I have a great story to tell my grandkids oh wait I don't have grandkids oh crap I'm all alone in this pit and they're shoveling the dirt in over my head and I can't move someone wake me up please please please i didn'tmeanitnostopmyeyesmymouthit'stheendnowaitit'sgoingonforever

Summary
Andrew Smith has received several awards for his many books including many starred reviews. His novel Marbury Lens has received a Young Adult Library Service Association Best For Young Adults award and several starred reviews by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus. Marbury Lens also received the Booklist Editor's Choice 2010 award and was named Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year for 2010. His novel Winger has also received starred reviews by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness. It was also granted an Amazon “Best of the Year” award and received an American Library Association Top 10 for 2014. Winger was also rated as one of Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2013 and Publishers Weekly Top 10 Summer Reads of 2013, was given a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2013, and finally was granted a 2014 Rainbow List Nominee as well. His novel In the Path of Falling Objects also received the “Best Book For Young Adults Award.” His novel Grasshopper Jungle has also been starred by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Shelf Awareness. Grasshopper Jungle has also been awarded the 2014 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.

Summary
After graduating college, Andrew Smith experimented with numerous journalistic careers, writing for many newspapers and radio stations. Unsatisfied with his career, “Smith began to visit country after country where he preformed countless odd jobs including working at metal mills, unloading bananas from Central America and imported autos from Japan, employment in bars and liquor stores, security, and even was a musician”. After leaving his broad horizons of work and travel Andrew Smith settled down and now resides in Southern California where he teaches in an alternative educational program for At-Risk teens. Andrew Smith also teaches advanced placement high school classes and coaches the school’s rugby team. Smith continued writing throughout his life but only sought out publication when challenged to do it by a lifelong friend, author Kelly Milner Halls. Smith’s first novel, Ghost Medicine, which was published in 2008 and was voted “best book for young adults,” by the American Library Association/ Young Adult Library Services Association in 2009. Smith continues to travel and has written 8 novels including critically acclaimed Winger, Grasshopper Jungle, 100 Sideways Miles, Losing it, The Marbury Lens, Passenger, Stick, and In The Path Of Falling Objects.

Summary
Andrew Smith is married with a daughter and a son. Smith's most recent novel, "Grasshopper Jungle", was never meant to be published, as he had decided to quit writing for others, but his son urged him to publish it.

Winger (2013)
Winger is the story of 14-year-old Ryan Dean West, the "winger" for his rugby team at Pine Mountain boarding school, who plays rugby with his gay best friend Joey , has a crush on his older, gorgeous best friend Annie, skips two grades, and is banished to the troublemaker’s dorm for hacking a teacher’s cellphone.

Grasshopper Jungle (2014)
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith follows 16-year-old protagonist Austin Szerba who thinks about everything in his life, from his gay best friend Robby and his girlfriend Shann to a silo's basement, as arousing and “accidentally unleashed an infestation of 6 foot tall praying mantises” that are unstoppable in their need to procreate with and kill humans.

100 Sideways Miles (2014)
100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith is a book inside of a book that follows the "unlikely hero" junior in high school who embarks on a trip to Oklahoma with his best friend Cade because he is heartbroken over a girl named Julia. The epileptic, low self-esteemed Finn who's mother died and who's father is a best-selling sci-fi writer who wrote the Lazarus Door that is about aliens, in the form of angels, that come to earth to have sex with humans before eating them with Finn as the main character finally learns to write his own destiny in the end.

The Marbury Lens (2010)
The Marbury Lens follows main character Jack, 16, who decides to get drunk at his best friend Conner's house, pass out on a park bench, and accept a ride him from a doctor who kidnaps him days before he is scheduled to leave for England. Jack, while in England and falling in love with a girl named Nickie, notices he is being followed by a man with “the strangest glasses, which soon fall into his hands" that transport him into a world called Marbury that is a wasteland where violence is rampant, humans are few, and there are “cannibals and droves of large bugs called harvesters” that follow Jack and Conner around on their strange journey.

Passenger (2012)
A sequel to The Marbury Lens, Passenger by Andrew Smith follows Jack and Conner as they destroy the lens that transports them to the world of Marbury and deal with the consequences that include being unknown in the world they spent so much time in and almost being killed because they are drawn to the world by dark forces not revealed in The Marbury Lens. Finding another pair of strange glasses in Marbury, Jack gets transported into "some version of home, where he faces the fallout from being the victim of a prior crime" that he does not recall; in the end, Jack and Conner are able to set everything back to normal.

Stick (2011)
Stick by Andrew Smith is based in Oregon and follows main character and protagonist Stick who was born with only 1 ear, and his gay older brother Bosten who was caught having sex with a male and is imprisoned by their abusive father. With the intention of freeing his brother, Stick instead finds his brother had fled he embarks on “a perilous journey to find him”.

Losing It (2013)
Losing It by Andrew Smith is an “anthology” about losing virginity. Offering their perspectives, ten authors who include Melvin Burgess, Anne Finne, Mary Hooper, A. S. King, Sophie McKenzie, Patrick Ness, Bali Rai, Andrew Smith, and Jenny Valentine, delve into their personal experiences and losing their own virginities.

In the Path of Falling Objects (2009)
In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith follows brothers Jonah, 16, and Simon, 14, on their horse-back journey to Yuma, Arizona because their mother abandoned them, their brother is missing in action, and their father is incarcerated there. When their horse dies, Simon hails a car with a pregnant teenage girl who is riding shotgun, being driven by a sociopathic man named Mitch, and has buckets of cash strewn throughout the car, a stolen statue, and guns.

Synthesis
Andrew A. Smith’s writing is typically about teenagers immersed in a coming-of-age theme. Throughout most of his books, the main character is a young male who is bullied in some way in his life and who is in love with a seemingly unattainable girl: unattainable simply because of his own guards, like in Grasshopper Jungle, or because of other factors in his life, like in Winger”. The characters in his books range from 14 years old to about 16 years old, and the main character is always male.

Summary
Andrew smith had intentions to be a writer ever since he was a young boy in high school. He traveled the world from job to job, not happy because he couldn’t pursue his dream of being a writer. After he settled his stable job of a high school teacher, he was able to find time to write on the side, leading to several published books this far in his life.

Synthesis
Andrew Smith was born a native-born Californian born in 1959. He always knew that he wanted to be a writer ever since he was the editor of his high school newspaper. He traveled around the world and from job to job, working in metal mills, as a longshoreman, in bars and liquor stores, in security and as a musician. After graduating college, he tried pursuing careers as a journalist, writing for newspapers, and writing radio stations, but he felt it wasn't the kind of writing that he wanted to do for the rest of his life. After much traveling around the world, Smith finally settled for a job as a high school teacher. . He taught advanced placement classes and coached a rugby team. The writing that he was doing on the side was never for publication, he would write for fun until he was challenged by one of his lifelong friends to get one of his books published. In 2008 his first novel “Ghost Medicine” was published followed by 3 more successful novels until his most recent, “Grasshopper Jungle”.

Summary
Andrew Smith (Born Andrew Anselmo Smith; 1959) is a Californian author and short story writer in the young adult genre, and an educator. He has written seven novels including the critically acclaimed Winger and most recently, Grasshopper Jungle, which is currently being adapted into a movie. Smith is known for his dark subject matter, and his random writing style. He is currently married with two children and teaches Government and Economics at Canyon High School in Santa Clarita, California