Susin Nielsen
Author of We Are All Made of Molecules
About the Author
Image credit: Credit: Tallulah Photography
Works by Susin Nielsen
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- female
- Short biography
- Gemini Award-winner Tundra author Susin Nielsen got her start feeding cast and crew muffins and bologna sandwiches on the popular television series, Degrassi Junior High. They hated her food (a fact that’s memorialized forever in a poem the cast wrote: “An ode to Susin, the Bran Muffin Queen, we eat them, we die, then we turn green”). Luckily for Susin, they saw a spark in a spec script she wrote. Nielsen went on to pen sixteen episodes of the hit television show, and four of the books in the Degrassi book series. Since then, Nielsen, who has received two Canadian Screenwriter awards, has written and story-edited many TV series, including Ready or Not, Madison, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Edgemont, and two animated series, What About Mimi and Braceface. She co-created the pre-school series Franny’s Feet, and is the co-creator and showrunner of the critically acclaimed series Robson Arms. She also adapted author Susan Juby’s book, Alice, I Think, into a TV series. Nielsen has also published three children’s books: Hank and Fergus, winner of the Mr. Christie’s Silver Medal Award, Mormor Moves In, and The Magic Beads. She lives in Vancouver with her husband, Goran, son, Oskar, and cat, Sam.
- Nationality
- Canada
- Associated Place (for map)
- Canada
Members
Reviews
"Fifty percent Swedish, twenty-five percent Haitian, twenty-five percent French" Felix Knutsen (sp?) lives with his mom, Astrid; when the story begins, Felix is telling their tale to a police officer. He relates how they used to live with his grandma before she died, then lived in a series of progressively smaller condos and apartments until they came to be living in a camper van. Felix hides his circumstances from his two best friends, Dylan Brinkerhoff and Winnie Wu, but ultimately reveals show more everything on live national television, in the first junior edition of a quiz show. Felix's goodness, and also his desperation, shines through as he relates his tale: he loves his mother, and understands her "slumps," and tries not to judge her for her slippery morality - but also, he really, really wants his own toilet. Felix is a funny, clear-eyed, empathy-inspiring narrator, who provides a windows-and-mirrors look at how homelessness can happen to anyone.
Quotes
I felt anxious. Not having a place to live can do that to a person. (A Brief History of Homes)
You know how sometimes you don't realize how much you've missed something until you get it back? That's how I felt about having a friend again. (I went to Dylan's house after...)
Some kids grow up with scary stories about monsters, or ghosts or bogeymen under the bed. My scary stories were about the MCFD [Ministry of Children and Family Development]. And unlike the ones about monsters, ghosts, and bogeymen, these stories weren't make-believe. (After Astrid told me she had been...)
"You think it'll never happen to you, well guess what? It can happen to anyone." (Want to sleep over...?)
[Astrid and Daniel were good people, but they weren't good parents.]
It can give a person comfort, feeling that something mysterious and otherworldly is looking out for you. But now I'm learning to have faith in something new...other people. (Millions of people all over the world....) show less
Quotes
I felt anxious. Not having a place to live can do that to a person. (A Brief History of Homes)
You know how sometimes you don't realize how much you've missed something until you get it back? That's how I felt about having a friend again. (I went to Dylan's house after...)
Some kids grow up with scary stories about monsters, or ghosts or bogeymen under the bed. My scary stories were about the MCFD [Ministry of Children and Family Development]. And unlike the ones about monsters, ghosts, and bogeymen, these stories weren't make-believe. (After Astrid told me she had been...)
"You think it'll never happen to you, well guess what? It can happen to anyone." (Want to sleep over...?)
[Astrid and Daniel were good people, but they weren't good parents.]
It can give a person comfort, feeling that something mysterious and otherworldly is looking out for you. But now I'm learning to have faith in something new...other people. (Millions of people all over the world....) show less
Violet's mom has dated a string of losers ever since Violet's dad left two years ago. Violet knows that her mom deserves better than the cheaters, liars, alcoholics, cheapskates, and creeps that she's been seeing. When her mom starts dating a pudgy, dorky guy named Dudley Wiener, Violet decides to take matters into her own hands: she'll set her mom up with George Clooney, the perfect man.
Susin Nielsen does a great job of characterization with her 12-year-old protagonist, mature one minute, show more childish the next; capable of complicated (and even devious) plans, but prone to speak and act impulsively. Violet's schemes and scrapes will have readers laughing, squirming with empathetic embarrassment, and maybe even crying, as Violet takes a few steps toward dealing with her parents' divorce and other changes in her life. Minor characters are equally well drawn, particularly Violet's little sister Rosie who is also learning to cope with their parents divorce, and the plot moves along at a good pace. show less
Susin Nielsen does a great job of characterization with her 12-year-old protagonist, mature one minute, show more childish the next; capable of complicated (and even devious) plans, but prone to speak and act impulsively. Violet's schemes and scrapes will have readers laughing, squirming with empathetic embarrassment, and maybe even crying, as Violet takes a few steps toward dealing with her parents' divorce and other changes in her life. Minor characters are equally well drawn, particularly Violet's little sister Rosie who is also learning to cope with their parents divorce, and the plot moves along at a good pace. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
I am a huge fan of first lines, or opening paragraphs, of novels as they give us such a taste of what is to come: They introduce the protagonist, often hint at the conflict, and definitely convey the author’s craft. Susan Nielsen creates such a grabber: “I have always wanted a sister. Brother, not so much. I like symmetry, and I always felt that a sister would crate the perfect quadrangle or ‘family square,’ with the X chromosomes forming two sides and the Ys forming the rest.” show more Thirteen –year old Stewart thinks at first that he’ll get his wish; his mom thinks she’s pregnant, but it turns out that what was growing inside her wasn’t a baby but cancer. She died 15 months later. It was impossibly hard for Stewart, “because we were missing one-third of our family. We had been like an equilateral triangle” (p. 2). There’s more mathematical language that just nails the kind of kid that Stewart is: “For a long time, [Dad] was Sad Dad twenty-four seven, and I was Sad Stewart twenty-four seven, and together we were Sad Squared, and it was just a big black hole of sadness” (p. 4). Ultimately, as Stewart gets a cat, Dad gets a girl friend, things do look up for this family, sort of. But when Dad and Stewart move in with Caroline and her daughter Ashley, Stewart finally gets that sister, and yes, it’s a be-careful-what-you-wish-for kind of scenario. Ashley’s dad has just moved out, informing the family that he’s gay, and she struggles with that: “It opens up a lot of questions. Questions that I don’t really want to know the answers to. Questions like: Did you ever really love us? Or was that a lie, too?” Told in alternating voices between Stewart and Ashley, this book is filled with every day complications. It’s poignant, funny, and will have middle school and high school readers routing for both the socially awkward Stewart and the mean-girl, self-absorbed Ashley. It deals with blended families, with bigotry, and bullying, coping with loss, and adjusting to new schools. I know librarians in middle school who often have eighth graders asking them for mean girl books: Give them this one. Humorously told, it will trump the books they may have expected and will have them reaching for more books by this author. show less
There are so many reviews out there for middle grade or young adult books where adult readers inexplicably complain that the main character is immature, well, yeah, you’re reading about a kid, there’s going to be a certain degree of immaturity there and if there isn’t, the story probably isn’t all that realistic. So warning to those readers, you should probably run for the hills rather than read about Violet.
Violet is most definitely on the young side of her twelve years, so she’s show more going to rub some readers the wrong way, the rest of us will simply understand that not everyone grows up at the same rate and I like seeing that reflected in books. If I’m going to read about kids who are written practically as though they’re mini adults, then I also want to read about the ones like Violet, who don’t have it all together yet, who act without entirely thinking it through, who still hold out hope for impossible things and do the kind of cringey stuff we’re all a little bit guilty of in our childhoods and beyond.
The emotion could have been amped up a little more here, this had effective moments, particularly where Violet and her sister Rose note that their dad favors his newest children, I wanted more of that sort of thing and more of the anxiety motivating Violet’s desire to find a solid match for her mom (the mom has had some seemingly depressive episodes following breakups). I also would have liked more interractions and maybe even confrontations between Violet and her parents, there were disappointments on both sides that I didn’t feel were addressed to quite the level they could have been, or at least not to the level that feelings are delved into in some of my favorite middle-grade books.
I did for the most part enjoy this, the pacing is brisk, and there’s humor throughout. show less
Violet is most definitely on the young side of her twelve years, so she’s show more going to rub some readers the wrong way, the rest of us will simply understand that not everyone grows up at the same rate and I like seeing that reflected in books. If I’m going to read about kids who are written practically as though they’re mini adults, then I also want to read about the ones like Violet, who don’t have it all together yet, who act without entirely thinking it through, who still hold out hope for impossible things and do the kind of cringey stuff we’re all a little bit guilty of in our childhoods and beyond.
The emotion could have been amped up a little more here, this had effective moments, particularly where Violet and her sister Rose note that their dad favors his newest children, I wanted more of that sort of thing and more of the anxiety motivating Violet’s desire to find a solid match for her mom (the mom has had some seemingly depressive episodes following breakups). I also would have liked more interractions and maybe even confrontations between Violet and her parents, there were disappointments on both sides that I didn’t feel were addressed to quite the level they could have been, or at least not to the level that feelings are delved into in some of my favorite middle-grade books.
I did for the most part enjoy this, the pacing is brisk, and there’s humor throughout. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 20
- Members
- 2,223
- Popularity
- #11,533
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 236
- ISBNs
- 185
- Languages
- 9
- Favorited
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