The Reading Warehouse

A surprising friendship

Do you ever feel like you've somehow lost your true best friend? Minn feels this way. So does Jake. But Minn and Jake have no intention of being friends. Minn's a string bean. Jake's a shrimp. Minn's a girl. Jake's a boy. And in fifth grade, who wants a best friend of the opposite sex? But Minn and Jake are forced together by circumstances, which only strengthen their resistance . . . until Minn takes Jake lizard hunting. There are lots of good ways to choose a friend.

This enchanting free-verse novel, accompanied by expressive, humorous black-and-white drawings, proves that sometimes friendship just happens.

Geneviève Côté was born in Montreal in 1964. For as long as she can remember, she has always wanted to be an illustrator. It seemed considerably easier than becoming an astronaut, which was her second choice.

Over the last fifteen years, she has illustrated a wide variety of subjects--serious, funny, or frankly bizarre--for publications like The New York Times, the Boston Globe and Utne Reader. She has also worked for various advertising agencies in Toronto, Montreal, and Melbourne. Illustrating children's books, however, is what she loves best of all.

Her work has appeared in Communication Arts, Print, Critique, and American Illustration, and has earned her several awards.

She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Janet Wong was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in Southern and Northern California. During her junior year in college, she lived in France, studying art history at the Universite de Bordeaux. When she returned from France, Janet founded the UCLA Immigrant Children's Art Project, a program focused on teaching refugee children to express themselves through art. Janet graduated from UCLA, summa cum laude, with a B.A. in History and College Honors. She then obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a director of the Yale Law and Technology Association and worked for New Haven Legal Aid. After practicing corporate and labor law for a few years for GTE and Universal Studios Hollywood, she chose to write for young people instead.

Janet's poems have been reprinted in many textbooks and anthologies, as well as in some more unusual venues. "Albert J. Bell" from A Suitcase of Seaweed was selected to appear on 5,000 subway and bus posters as part of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority's "Poetry in Motion" program, and poems from Behind the Wheel have been featured on a car-talk radio show.

Janet's awards include the International Reading Association's "Celebrate Literacy Award," presented by the Foothill Reading Council for exemplary service in the promotion of literacy. She also has been appointed to the Commission on Literature of the National Council of Teachers of English. Janet's first two books have received several awards including the prestigious Stone Center Recognition of Merit, given by the Claremont Graduate School's Stone Center for Children's Books.