Michael de Guzman


My new book, GROWING UP RITA, is available at Amazon, Createspace, and Nook. You can read two chapters by clicking on the title in the right hand column.

The paperback and ebook editions of MELONHEAD, which was first published in hardcover in 2002, are now available at Amazon, Createspace, and other sites.

Biography

My books are about kids who populate the margins of conventional society, who have something big to face, who take action on their own behalf, and who are aided by adults who live on the margins themselves. A coming together of the world we live in and the world inside my head.

When I was growing up I saw injustice and hypocrisy everywhere I looked. I still do. The battle against them goes on. Windmills must be tilted at, or the power of romance will disappear, and we will be the poorer for it. I believe in the power of imagination and laughter and love. And, as a character in FINDING STINKO says, "Hope is the soap that floats in the bathtub of life."


I went to Trinity School in Manhattan and the University of Rhode Island, where I met my wife, to whom, much to my good fortune, I am still married. We live in Seattle.




Novels for kids and parents

A journey of self-discovery that takes Sidney, a boy with an enormous head on a pencil thin body, across America in search of a place to be.
Rita Martinez is separated from her mother in an immigration raid and must find the courage and skills to survive while she tries to find her and get her back.
Henrietta must find the courage to confront change and tragedy when her perfect world is turned upside down.
A mute runaway boy finds a ventriloquist’s dummy and rediscovers his own voice.
Albert’s dream of adventure comes true when Wendell, the grandfather he’s never met, shows up unexpectedly and they go off together on an unexpected journey.
Beekman and his father have moved a dozen times in his brief life in Manhattan. He's been to nearly that many schools. All he wants in life now is to stay in one place.

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