Smith, D. James 1955-

Personal

Born June 6, 1955, in Fresno, CA; married; wife's name Kimberly. Education: California State University, Fresno, M.A. (education and English). Hobbies and other interests: Motorcycling, German shepherds.

Addresses

Home—Fresno, CA. Agent—Barbara Markowitz, P.O. Box 41709, Los Angeles, CA 90041.

Career

Writer and educator. Teacher in Selma, CA, 1979—.

Member

Fresno Poets' Association.

Awards, Honors

National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, 1999; New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing selection, 2005, and Edgar Allan Poe Award, Mystery Writers of America, 2006, both for The Boys of San Joaquin.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN

Fast Company, Dorling Kindersly (New York, NY), 1999.

The Boys of San Joaquin, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2005.

Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2006.

Color Us All, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2007.

FOR ADULTS

Prayers for the Dead Ventriloquist (poetry), Ahsahta Press (Boise, ID), 1995.

My Brother's Passion (adult novel), Permanent Press, 2004.

Sounds the Living Make, Lewis & Clark Press, 2007.

Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including Blackbird, Malahat Review, Notre Dame Review, and Stand. Contributor to anthologies, including Poetry of the American West, Boise State University, 1996; and How Much Earth, Heyday Books, 2001.

Sidelights

Poet and novelist D. James Smith's verse collection Prayers for the Dead Ventriloquist was praised by Choice contributor L. Smith for containing "poems of terrible beauty, bold and real paintings in available light." A teacher in his native California, Smith is best known to younger readers for his young-adult novels, which include Fast Company and the Edgar Award-winning The Boys of San Joaquin.

As a high-school teacher, Smith is familiar with the problems and worries plaguing young people during their growing-up years, and this insight comes through in his novels for young adults. Fast Company, which used a dual narrative to profile a destructive young man's downward spiral, inspired Horn Book contributor Nancy Vasilakis to dub the book "a promising first novel." Written for a slightly younger audience, The Boys of San Joaquin transports readers back to early 1950s California and spins what a Kirkus Reviews writer deemed an "upbeat tale [that] offers a strong sense of place, plenty of growing-up and … spirited characters." In Smith's book, Irish-Italian-American preteen narrator Paolo O'Neil sets about tracking down a missing collection offering at his rural, small-town Catholic church. The twelve-year-old boy is helped by his clever-but-deaf nine-year-old cousin Billy, and the two boys encounter a host of interesting experiences while solving their mystery. In a sequel to The Boys of San Joaquin, Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me, Paolo tackles the world of work via a paper route he shares with Billy and six-year-old brother Georgie. When Paolo's dog Rufus is dognapped, Paolo joins friend Theresa Mueller in tracing the pup's whereabouts, but worries about Rufus soon take a back seat to confusion over Paolo's feelings for his attentive co-sleuth.

Comparing Smith's work to that of young-adult writers such as Richard Peck and Bruce Clements, Elizabeth Ward wrote in her Washington Post Book World review of The Boys of San Joaquin that the novel's "very funny" plot contains "a moral sting in its tail but not an ounce of piety." In School Library Journal Carol A. Edwards described Paolo as a "keen narrator" and concluded that Smith's "mastery of language makes

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[The Boys of San Joaquin] a read-aloud, laugh-out-loud hit." Also commending the boy's narrative voice, Kathleen Kelly MacMillan wrote in the same periodical that in Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me "the real treat … is Paolo's first-person, present-tense narration, brimming with sly humor and lovely turns of phrase." Also remarking on Smith's likeable main character, a Kirkus Reviews writer noted that Paolo's "engaging" sequel "is notable for the underlying message that all kids need encouragement."

"I came to writing in my mid-thirties, when I was formally trained as a poet, and I continue as one today," Smith explained to SATA. "But I was looking for a way to get the humor I enjoy with my students into my work. So began The Boys of San Joaquin. I wanted something of the irreverence of Tom Sawyer, the dignity of Charlie Chaplin, and the ridiculousness of W.C. Fields. I found a little of each in the book's plucky narrator, Paolo.

"Paolo is so much fun because he walks around with a completely inaccurate map of the world in his head. He's been fed a ton of misinformation by his older brothers. He passes this on to his little brother, Georgie, and to his deaf cousin, Billy, along with some extra misinformation of his own. (Paolo is known to stretch the truth whenever possible, most especially if he sees some advantage in it.) Along the way, he continually wrestles with his conscience and, yes, he always ends up doing the right thing, but not without a struggle.

"Paulo continues to interest me because he is bi-cultural: his mother is Italian and his dad hails from Appalachia. His large, extended family and his home town provide a host of characters that demand that Paolo struggle to reconcile alternate viewpoints, just as so many of my own students do. This gives my students a depth that comes from their participation in a rich and varied America, and I wanted that in my fictional kids, too.

"Anyway, I like these young characters, their honesty, the way they make me laugh, which I do, unashamedly, as I sit at my computer happily banging away at the keys. What I want in these books is to present rather serious ideas with a gentle, unrelenting humor. So far, it has worked. And it's fun knowing these little guys aren't done with me yet."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 1999, Hazel Rochman, review of Fast Company, p. 518; February 15, 2005, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of My Brother's Passion, p. 1062; September 1, 2006, Lynn Rutan, review of Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me, p. 130.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, October, 1999, review of Fast Company, p. 69; February, 2005, Timnah Card, review of The Boys of San Joaquin, p. 266; October, 2006, Cindy Welch, review of Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me, p. 96.

Choice, November, 1995, p. 467.

Horn Book, September, 1999, Nancy Vasilakis, review of Fast Company, p. 618.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2004, review of My Brother's Passion, p. 774; February 1, 2005, review of The Boys of San Joaquin, p. 182; July 1, 2006, review of Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me, p. 682.

Publishers Weekly, November 15, 1999, review of Fast Company, p. 68.

School Library Journal, October, 1999, Alison Follow, review of Fast Company, p. 158; January, 2005, Carol A. Edwards, review of The Boys of San Joaquin, p. 136; July, 2005, Erin Dennington, review of My Brother's Passion, p. 132; August, 2006, Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, review of Probably the World's Best Story about a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me, p. 129.

Voice of Youth Advocates, February, 2000, review of Fast Company, p. 410.

Washington Post Book World, February 20, 2005, Elizabeth Ward, review of The Boys of San Joaquin.

Western American Literature, fall, 1996, pp. 272-273.