Hacker, Randi 1951–

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Hacker, Randi 1951–

(Randi Dawn Hacker)

Personal

Born 1951; children: Juliana. Education: University of Michigan, B.A. (English); St. Michael's College, M.A. (English as a Second Language).

Addresses

Office—Center for East Asian Studies, Bailey Hall, Rm. 200, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045-7574. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Author and educator. Former editor for in New York, NY, including at Children's Television Workshop; teacher at elementary schools in northern VT; former children's librarian; Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia, University of Kansas, outreach coordinator. Creator, editor-in-chief, and publisher of P3 (environmental magazine for children), 1990.

Awards, Honors

New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age designation, 2007, for Life as I Knew It; featured author at Kansas Book Festival, 2007.

Writings

(With Jackie Kaufman) Habitats: Where the Wild Things Live, J. Muir Publications (Santa Fe, NM), 1992.

(With Sylvia S. Hacker) What Every Teenager Really Wants to Know about Sex: With the Startling New Information Every Parent Should Read, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 1993.

How to Live Green, Cheap, and Happy: Save Money! Save the Planet!, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 1994.

Detective and Spy Science: Experiment Log, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2001.

Life as I Knew It, Simon Pulse (New York, NY), 2006.

Author of six titles in "Jim Henson's Bedtime Stories" series; and titles in "Magic Schoolbus" and "Pony Pals" activity-book series. contributor to television series "Windy Acres," 2004; and programs for Nickelodeon. Contributor of parenting articles to Sesameworkshop.org. Co-author, with Jackie Kaufman, of satirical essays published in New York Times Book Review, Spy, Premier, and Punch.

Sidelights

Writer and educator Randi Hacker has written both fiction and nonfiction titles, often focusing on educational topics. She has contributed to the "Jim Henson's Bedtime Stories" series, featuring the popular Muppets characters; has written scripts for television; and is the founder of P3, an environmental magazine geared for young readers. With her partner, Jackie Kaufman, Hacker created P3—the name refers to the fact that Earth is the third planet from the sun—to encourage activism in older elementary-grade children. Within a year of its 1990 launch the periodical boasted a circulation of 20,000 copies. Hacker and Kaufman also teamed up to write the book Habitats: Where the Wild Things Live. Also with Kaufman, she wrote teleplays for Nickelodeon programming as well as satirical essays that have been published in major periodicals. In addition to writing, Hacker works as outreach coordinator for the University of Kansas Center for East Asian Studies, located in Lawrence. In this capacity, she works with children ranging from preschool-aged to third grade, and teaches introductory Chinese, sometimes helped by her twelve-year-old adopted Chinese daughter, Juliana.

In 2006 Hacker moved from juvenile nonfiction to young-adult fiction with Life as I Knew It. Narrated by sixteen-year-old Angelina Rossini, the novel describes the trials in Angelina's life after her world stops being normal. Her father, around whom her life has revolved, is much older than her mother, and when he has a stroke, everything in the teen's world changes. The stroke leaves her dad partially paralyzed and unable to speak, and leaves Angelina feeling that she has lost a parent. Lyn Seippel, reviewing the novel for Book Loons online, found Life as I Knew It to be "a touching story and worth reading."

Although Kliatt reviewer Amanda MacGregor described the supporting characters in Life as I Knew It as "vibrant" and praised the tale as a "compelling and emotional story," she noted that Angelina's narrative voice seems "uninspired" by comparison. In Kirkus Reviews, however, a critic maintained that "Hacker vividly sketches Andrea, with Italian gusto and bits of bittersweet wisdom." Suzanne Gordon, reviewing the novel in School Library Journal, wrote that Hacker creates "a handful of strong homosexual characters" in her story, one of whom is Angelina's best friend, Jax. Angelina's crush on Jax serves as one of the conflicts in the novel.