Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up | Series: Amazing Days of Abby Hayes (Pb)
Abby Hayes is a fifth grader trying to invent a role for herself in a seemingly perfect world. This series combines the edge of BRIDGET JONES with a send-up of self-help books.
When Abby is home sick with the flu, Ms. Kantor announces that the fifth grade will be participating in a science fair. It's bad enough that Abby comes back to school with an unfortunate haircut, but it's even worse that her science fair partner is... a boy!
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Quite a lot of Anne Mazer's writing education took place while she was unconscious. Her parents wanted desperately to become writers and made themselves get up at 4:00 a.m. Every morning in order to have writing time before their three young children awoke. The first thing Anne heard every day was two big, noisy electric typewriters. The furious sound of typing was her childhood wake-up music. During the day, her parents endlessly discussed ideas, plot, and character, and before she was seven years old, Anne knew about revisions, first and second drafts, and rejection slips. It was like growing up in a twenty four hour, seven day a week writer's boot camp.
In order to escape from her parents' obsession with writing, Anne turned to books. She was an avid reader from an early age and credits her love of reading for her writing career. Her favorite works were fantasy, fairy tales, historical fiction, humor, realistic fiction, and adventure. Her other interests were language, art, history, and science. At the age of twelve, she wanted to be an actress, a ballerina and a nuclear physicist. These careers were rapidly eliminated as she realized that a) she couldn't dance, b) she couldn't act; and c) she hated math.
Although at the time Anne thought writing was nothing but a nuisance, she now considers herself very lucky to have grown up with two aspiring writers. She learned a lot about discipline, perseverance and dedication to a craft from witnessing her parents' struggle. They eventually became successful and award-winning young adult novelists.
It took Anne a long time to figure out that she, too, wanted to be a writer. During early adulthood, she worked as an au pair, a bank teller, a pill bottle labeler, a receptionist, an English tutor, and an administrative assistant, as well as other jobs that she was ill-suited for. She attended three universities, spent several years in Paris, traveled throughout Europe, and worked in Boston and New York City.
Anne's "eureka" moment about writing came while she prepared a research report for one of her bosses. As she lovingly polished each sentence, and meticulously organized the paragraphs, she realized that no one really cared how beautifully she wrote about the latest models of air-conditioners. Except her, of course.
Using her parents' model of daily writing and discipline, she began to write. It took her seven years to publish her first book, a picture book inspired by her then two year old son, Max.
Anne is the mother of an adult son and daughter. Over the last twenty years, she has written over forty-five books for young readers. She has enough ideas to last for another quarter century and hopes that she will be writing for a very long time.
Fun Facts About Anne Mazer
* Her favorite foods are popcorn, rice pudding and blueberries. * When she was a kid, she would sometimes read up to ten books a day. * If she had magic powers, she'd choose invisibility. * She painted the rooms in her house yellow, orange, and violet. * One of her favorite childhood books was The Twilight of Magic, by Hugh Lofting. * When Anne was a teenager, her room was so messy that she needed a map to get from the door to the bed. (sort of) * In school Anne often flunked her favorite creative subjects, like writing and art.
Two Heads Are Better Than One is my favorite Abby Hayes book yet. It is about when Abby is sick and gets a bad haircut. To make things worse, when she comes back to school, her science fair partner is a......... boy!! Could this day get any worse? If you want to find out, go to the library or bookstore and read this book!!
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I love these series the books are really good and I love the content and I am also trying to read the whole series but I want Anne Mazer to come up with more cuz I never want to stop reading them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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In this book, which was one of my favorite in the series, Abby is sick with the flu for a while and has to miss school. When she was absent, the two fifth grade classes got partners for the science fair and when Abby comes back, she finds out that she is partners with the most ignorant, annoying, mean, rude, boy she has ever met! And on top of that, she has given herself a bad haircut and she is sure everyone at school will make fun of it. And if things couldn't get worse, once Casey (Abby's partner) and Abby decided on a topic for their project, Abby does something horrible! You'll have to see what she did by reading the book, so go out and get a copy today!
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