Alum writes award-winning book
3/30/08
“Reading Reaching for Sun is like taking slow bites from a piece of homemade lemon pie—sharp and sweet and honest, and at the end you wish there was more.”
So says Linda Sue Parks, Newbery Medal Winner, about a novel by Miami alum and children’s author Tracie Vaughn Zimmer that uses poems to tell the story of a year in the life of a middle-school student who has cerebral palsy.
Copyright 2007
Reaching for Sun (Bloomsbury U.S.A Children’s Books, 2007) has been awarded the Schneider Family Book Award from the American Library Association.
Zimmer earned a master’s degree in education from Miami in 1996. Her first teaching assignment was in special education, and her protagonist, Josie, is based on her classroom years.
“Many of my students didn’t realize they were different; they were kind of blessedly unaware. But I had a few students, like Josie, who knew they were on the outside of everything. These bright kids, stuck in bodies they felt betrayed them; I witnessed their daily courage and grace. I wanted to honor them in a story,” she said.