Young Adult Author Janet McDonald Dies at 53
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 4/16/2007
Young adult author Janet McDonald, a prominent voice who reached African-American teens who felt underrepresented in books, died of cancer in Paris on April 11. She was 53.
McDonald, who grew up one of seven children in public housing in Brooklyn, NY, came into the world with several disadvantages, which she managed to overcome with her love of books and a wonderful sense of humor. “What do you do when your life is set up to be as rough as possible?,” she once wrote. “You just have to focus on the good parts. Like the fact that your parents are great cooks. And your older brother, the jock, lets you hang out with him and play sports. And your little brother is really cool and your best friend. And reading takes you completely out of your dreary world and into excitement, adventure, and fun.” McDonald got out of the projects and into college, where she earned degrees from some of the most prominent universities--French literature from Vassar, journalism from Columbia, and law from New York University. “And then books took me over completely and I began writing my own.” McDonald’s adult memoir, Project Girl (1999), was praised by Frank McCourt and Rosie O'Donnell, as well as many major newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, which singled it out as one of the outstanding books of 1999. And her six young adult novels have won critical acclaim. They include Harlem Hustle (2006) and Chill Wind (2002, all Farrar, Straus), which won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award. To get a glimpse of what life was like, McDonald once wrote that she disliked her “humiliatingly weird middle name—Arneda." And that she was disappointed to find out that she wasn’t going to grow up in the “spacious, airy home I dreamed about in the womb but in a small apartment in the projects that I will eventually share with four brothers, two sisters, and two parents.” McDonald moved from Brooklyn to Seattle and then to Paris, France. Her latest book, Off-Color, is scheduled for release in November 2007.
