ANN MALASPINA
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  • Home
  • More About the Author
  • A Scarf for Keiko
  • Heart on Fire
  • Touch the Sky
  • Author Visits
  • More Books
  • Classroom Guides, Critiques, Editing
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About Me




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This photograph is my family's ancestral village of Pyrgos on the volcanic island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. 
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My father emigrated from Greece after World War II and became a food scientist. This is a photo of him at age 16 on the Nea Hellas, sailing into New York Harbor in 1948.  My mother is a fifth grade language arts teacher from Bayonne, NJ. ​
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I'm the author of over 30 books for children and teens. I write about the environment, history, social justice, and people who make a difference. My books have been honored with the Asian/Pacific American Library Association Award for Literature ( Picture Book),  Amelia Bloomer Top Ten List, Junior Library Guild Selection, SCBWI Martha Weston Grant, Paterson Prize for Books for Young People (Picture Book), and more.

I have an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.  The college is on a hill in Montpelier, the state capital, where the temperature is way below zero in January. The only way to keep warm is to write faster. 





Public Library

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My local public library is where I find new books to read and start many of my own book projects. I don't know what I'd do without it! I also like to visit other libraries, especially The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. 
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Research

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I like to visit the places where my characters lived and worked. Sometimes I take my family, because they ask great questions and give me ideas. On a trip to Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia and the F. D. Roosevelt State Park, I took my mother, who remembers the Great Depression and President Roosevelt first-hand. 
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Working on a story on hawk migration
 at Hawk Mountain, PA.
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10 Things About Me

1. I grew up in an 11th floor apartment in Brooklyn, NY.
2. In elementary school, I played Dorothy's dog Toto in the Wizard of Oz and Fern's mother in Charlotte's Web.
3. This year my butterfly garden is blooming in my backyard. 
4. I am working on a YA verse novel set in Astoria, Queens, where my sons, Sam and Nick, were born. 
5. My son Nick's two pups Rin and Appa are my favorite dogs. 
6. I spent a month canoeing in the wildlife reserve La Verendrey in Quebec and two weeks on the Allagash River in Maine.
7. I try to read a new poem every day.

8. I read The New York Times every morning. 
9. My favorite place is Santorini, where my grandfather was born. 
10. I'm learning to play a ukulele as research for a picture book in progress. Luckily, my husband knows the chords.



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Visiting a children's public library in Elsinore, Denmark in 2019.
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My family's apartment on Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
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My family
PictureRunning my first 5K race on New Year's Day in New Jersey. It was cold!

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Poetry

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Writing poetry helps me to become more aware of my word choices and what matters. "Seeing Jupiter" is a poem I wrote about standing in my brother's field in South Jersey on a summer night with my family. It was published in Hoot Review, a cool literary magazine printed on a postcard.
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I'm learning to play the ukulele while researching a book about a ukulele player. It helps to have two ukulele players in the family, my husband and brother. Not to mention a lot of ukuleles.
"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful." — Malala