Cullen, Lynn

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Cullen, Lynn

Personal

Born in Fort Wayne, IN; married; husband named Michael; children: three daughters. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, history.

Addresses

Home and office—Atlanta, GA.

Career

Author of children's books.

Awards, Honors

Named Georgia Author of the Year, 1999, for The Mightiest Heart; "Discover Great New Writers" selection, Barnes & Noble, 2007, for I Am Rembrandt's Daughter.

Writings

MIDDLE-GRADE NOVEL

The Backyard Ghost, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 1993.

Meeting the Make-Out King, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Ready, Set—Regina, Camelot (New York, NY), 1996.

Regina Calhoun Eats Dog Food, Camelot (New York, NY), 1997.

The Three Lives of Harris Harper, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Stink Bomb, Avon Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Nelly in the Wilderness, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

PICTURE BOOKS

The Mightiest Heart, illustrated by Laurel Long, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1998.

Godiva, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt, Golden Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Little Scraggly Hair: A Dog on Noah's Ark, illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers, Holiday House (New York, NY), 2003.

Moi and Marie Antoinette, illustrated by Amy Young, Bloomsbury Children's Books (New York, NY), 2006.

I Am Rembrandt's Daughter, Bloomsbury Children's Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Sidelights

As a child growing up in Indiana, Lynn Cullen roamed her local library in search of biographies of interesting people. As an adult, her travels have taken her many interesting places, and her interest in people and history have inspired her books for young readers.

Cullen's first book, the middle-grade novel The Backyard Ghost, taps into the author's interest in U.S. history through her story about a preteen whose worries about being popular are quickly set aside when she discovers a ghost from the Civil War haunting her home. A seventh grader's hopes of being accepted by the popular group at school have a chance to come true, until Nora is asked to date a middle-grade Don Juan in Meeting the Make-out King.

A twelve-year-old boy is the star of The Three Lives of Harris Harper, which finds a boy wishing he could trade in his quirky and chaotic family for the upper-class Benya family he babysits for. When his young charge, Jamey Benya, runs away, Harris learns that even the most perfect family is not what it seems, in what Booklist critic Chris Sherman dubbed an "easy reading story [that] skillfully blends the humor and angst of early adolescent relationships with a serious exploration of family identity. Another preteen boy, Kenny, learns about life while caring for a pair of orphaned baby squirrels in Stink Bomb, a novel that contains a "worthy message—the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions," according to a Publishers Weekly critic.

Turning to history, Nelly in the Wilderness takes readers back to 1821, as twelve-year-old Nelly Vandorn and her older brother, Cornelius, hope to preserve their rural way of life in the Indiana frontier after their widowed father brings home a city-bred wife named Margery, a young woman with cosmopolitan tastes. Praising Cullen's story for its focus on a complex young charac-

ter, Horn Book contributor Mary M. Burns called Nelly in the Wilderness "not only an evocation of frontier life but also a study of an adolescent girl's maturation against fearful odds" that include a lack of parenting and education. In addition to introducing "a capable, headstrong heroine," the novel "delivers a surprising amount of information about life on the early American frontier," concluded Chris Sherman in his Booklist review.

The result of eight years worth of research and travel, Cullen's historical novel I Am Rembrandt's Daughter transports readers to the fifteenth century and the era of the Dutch Masters. Set in Amsterdam, the novel is narrated by fourteen-year-old Cornelia, the illegitimate daughter of Rembrandt van Rijn. Having been spurned by his wealthy patrons, Rembrandt is embittered and living in poverty. Starved for affection and worried about her future, Cornelia aspires to a conventional life and she realizes that marriage is the only way to accomplish this. While caring for her increasingly mentally unstable father, the teen builds a relationship with Carel, the son of a wealthy shipping family, even as she is attracted to the far-less-wealthy Neel, one of Rembrandt's last students. In I Am Rembrandt's Daughter Cullen creates "a powerful family drama," according to Gillian Engberg, the Booklist critic describing Cullen's novel an "absorbing, romantic story of a teen who upends her worldview and, in doing so, grows into herself. Citing the novel's "vivid prose," School Library Journal critic Joyce Adams Burner added that "Cullen drenches her depiction of Cornelia's coming-of-age in deft details of the plague-ridden [Amsterdam]."

Cullen mines the traditions of British folklore in her picture books The Mightiest Heart and Godiva. In The Mightiest Heart, a folk tale based on a Welsh legend dating to the twelfth century, Gelert, the dog of Prince Llywelyn, is wrongly banished when his owner is led to believe that the dog has attacked Llywelyn's infant son. Commending the handsome illustrations by Laurel Long for imbuing the book with "an epic quality," Booklist contributor Carolyn Phelan wrote that the novel's "period setting and compelling plot will carry readers along.

A more well-known character is the subject of Godiva, which expands the story about the cobbler's daughter whose greedy husband, Lord Leofric, promised that he would lower the taxes on the citizens of Coventry if she rode naked through the streets, clothed only by her long hair. Cullen tells the "dramatic" story of Lady Godiva "directly and without fuss," wrote Booklist critic GraceAnne A. DeCandido, and Kathryn Hewitt's richly tones illustrations expand her "tender retelling." Calling Godiva "an excellent book for youngsters who may be unfamiliar with this tale," Sheilah Kosco added in School Library Journal that Cullen includes an afterword that "puts the tale into historical perspective."

Cullen takes a different slant on history in Little Scraggly Hair: A Dog on Noah's Ark, which tells the biblical story from the point of view of a scruffy pup. In addition, the story is a porquois tale that explains why dogs have warm, wet noses and are devoted friends to man. Another historical epoch is introduced from a pug dog's eye view in Moi and Marie Antoinette, which follows the life of French queen Marie Antoinette during her growth from a teenager to a mother and monarch as narrated by her devoted pet. In Publishers Weekly a critic dubbed Little Scraggly Hair "a dog-lover's delight," while Booklist critic Shelle Rosenfeld concluded that the message in Moi and Marie Antoinette "is classic, and the royal pooch makes an enticing narrator."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1996, Chris Sherman, review of The Three Lives of Harris Harper, p. 1362; December 15, 1998, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Mightiest Heart, p. 748; January 1, 2002, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Godiva, p. 851; April 1, 2002, Chris Sher-

man, review of Nelly in the Wilderness, p. 1328; November 1, 2003, Abby Nolan, review of Little Scraggly Hair: A Dog on Noah's Ark, p. 500; November 1, 2006, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of Moi and Marie Antoinette, p. 60; April 15, 2007, Gillian Engberg, review of I Am Rembrandt's Daughter, p. 52.

Horn Book, July-August, 2002, Mary M. Burns, review of Nelly in the Wilderness, p. 457.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2001, review of Nelly in the Wilderness, p. 1756; October 1, 2003, review of Little Scraggly Hair, p. 1222; September 15, 2006, review of Moi and Marie Antoinette, p. 950; June 1, 2007, review of I Am Rembrandt's Daughter.

Publishers Weekly, May 3, 1993, review of The Backyard Ghost, p. 310; January 19, 1998, review of Stink Bomb, p. 378; October 26, 1998, review of The MightiestHeart, p. 65; November 5, 2001, review of Godiva, p. 71; February 25, 2002, review of Nelly in the Wilderness, p. 67; November 10, 2003, review of Little Scraggly Hair, p. 61; October 9, 2006, review of Moi and Marie Antoinette, p. 55; June 25, 2007, review of I Am Rembrandt's Daughter, p. 61.

School Library Journal, November, 2001, Sheilah Kosco, review of Godiva, p. 144; February, 2002, Carol A. Edwards, review of Nelly in the Wilderness, p. 130; December, 2003, Linda Staskus, review of Little Scraggly Hair, p. 112; August, 2007, Joyce Adams Burner, review of I Am Rembrandt's Daughter, p. 114.