ABOUT

Me and my sister, Deb.


Me and my sister, Deb.

Hi! I write books about kids finding their place in the world. Even as a young girl, I was always trying to find my place. The right book is a way of doing that. I’ll never forget how I felt reading A Wrinkle in Time. I immediately felt a connection with Meg Murry and her thick glasses and mouth full of braces. Meg Murry was fiercely independent. She did not try to be like anyone else. Armed with her own smarts and imperfect love, she saved her father and she saved the world. It made me think, If Meg Murry could be so brave, then maybe…just maybe…

Growing up, my world was colored by my grandparents’ stories. My grandma zulick0001grandmother Irene’s experience of immigrating to a  confusing and often prejudiced new world. And my grandmother, Miriam, who with my Aunt Hazel ran a farm and raised three girls all on their own.

Sometimes, we can’t know how brave we are until everything in our world is disrupted – a mom ends up in jail, a girl is plucked from her comfortable world and tossed into one where all the rules have changed. Sometimes we find ourselves alone and scared. It is in these times that we are challenged: Give up or stand up.

So these are my stories. Stories of kids losing everything in the hopes of gaining everything. I hope that when you read them, maybe you will see a little of your own self in Ruby & Ahmad, Sitara & Izzy, and Cal & Rosine–and you will realize how truly brave you are!

@HilaryBPhotography

Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo is the author of Each of Us a Universe (in which she collaborated with Ndengo Gladys Mwilelo), A Galaxy of Sea Stars and Ruby in the Sky, which earned two starred reviews and which Booklist called “quietly magical.”

Jeanne is also a volunteer with IRIS-Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services in New Haven, Connecticut. She lives in Ellington, Connecticut, with her husband, Paul and her children Andrew, Sophia, as well as her writing pal, Meadow the Wonder Pup!

Meadow

A two-time cancer survivor, Jeanne has been a public defender, taught English at the Gymnazium Parovska in Nitra, Slovakia, worked on Capitol Hill and waited tables at an all-night café/bookstore in Washington, D.C. She is a member of SCBWI.

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