''My Life as a Book'' is a

children's novel Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reade ...

written by Janet Tashjian and illustrated by her teenage son, Jake Tashjian. It is the first book in the ''My Life'' series. It has been translated into ten languages including Spanish, Catalan, Hebrew, Turkish, Czech, and German. Its sequels-''My Life as a Stuntboy'' and ''My Life as a Cartoonist'' - have also been translated into several languages. The novel tells the story of Derek Fallon, a mischievous twelve-year-old boy who finds reading difficult because of his reading disability. As a way to learn his vocabulary words, he illustrates them in the margins of a book his mom got him. When he discovers a newspaper in the attic with the story of a girl who drowned on

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, lying just south of Cape Cod. It is known for being a popular, affluent summer colony, and includes the smaller peninsula Chappaquiddick Isla ...

, he spends his summer trying to uncover the mystery of what happened instead of completing his summer reading list.

Background

Tashjian wanted to write a book for reluctant readers with the humor and visual support of a ''

Calvin and Hobbes ''Calvin and Hobbes'' is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was Print syndication, syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. Commonly described as "the last great newspaper comic", ''Calvin a ...

'' book, even dedicating the novel to its creator

Bill Watterson William Boyd Watterson II (born July 5, 1958) is an American cartoonist who authored the comic strip ''Calvin and Hobbes''. The strip was syndicated from 1985 to 1995. Watterson concluded ''Calvin and Hobbes'' with a short statement to newspa ...

. She incorporated the methods of several reading programs into the novels such as Lindamood Bell's ‘Visualizing and Verbalizing’ and Maryanne Wolf’s ‘Rave-O.’

Books in the Series

The series has a total of 10 books. # ''My Life as a Book'' (2010) # ''My Life as a Stuntboy'' (2011) # ''My Life as a Cartoonist'' (2013) # ''My Life as a Joke'' (2014) # ''My Life as a Gamer'' (2015) # ''My Life as a Ninja'' (2017) # ''My Life as a Youtuber'' (2018) # ''My Life as a Meme'' (2019) # ''My Life as a Coder'' (2020) # ''My Life as a Billionaire'' (2021)

References

{{Reflist *http://www.booklistonline.com/ProductInfo.aspx?pid=3999399&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 *http://us.macmillan.com/mylifeasabook/JanetTashjian *http://www.kidsreads.com/reviews/my-life-as-a-book Novels by Janet Tashjian 2010 American novels American children's novels 2010 children's books Henry Holt and Company books