A Crooked Kind of Perfect

Great Reads for Girls will be meet on Thursday, November 16 at 7 p.m. downstairs at the library. Plan now to join us for this fun evening.

We will be discussing A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban

Ten-year-old Zoe Elias dreams of playing a baby grand piano at Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn't the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn't the only part of Zoe's life that's off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day. Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises--and that perfection may be even better when it's just a little off center.

Linda Urban

 Linda Urban was born in Detroit, Michigan and grew up in a house in the suburbs that looked like all the other houses on her street.

 She wanted to be different — to shine, to have people see her as special. She tried ballet dancing and singing and playing musical instruments, but she wasn’t very good at any of those things. Writing stories was fun! And often people liked what she wrote.

At Oakbrook Elementary, she wrote lots of poems and stories. Nothing made her feel more special than hearing an audience cheer for a character she had written. So she kept writing. All through elementary school and junior high she wrote short stories and plays and poems.

By college, she had turned her writing toward advertising and marketing, using her creativity to sell the creative work of others. It landed me at Vroman’s Bookstore, a large independent in Southern California, where I served as marketing director for about ten years. What a great job! She was surrounded every day by books and authors and artists and readers. One of her responsibilities was to organize author events. She met thousands of writers.  

Finally, when her daughter turned two and she turned 37, she got the guts to try writing fiction again. Having a child brought her back to reading the kinds of books that she most loved, books for kids. As much as she enjoys reading grown-up books, it is kids’ books that grab her heart.

Reading those books gave her inspiration.

And so, when she sat down to write, the stories that spilled out were the kind she loved best, books for young readers. So far, she has written a picture book titled Mouse Was Mad and two chapter books titled A Crooked Kind of Perfect and Hound Dog True.

She lives with her family in Montpelier, Vermont