Paul Fleischman - writer
David Roberts – illustrator
The Dunderheads
Miss Breakbone hates kids. Especially the time-squandering, mindwandering, doodling, dozing dunderheads in her class. But when she confiscates Junkyard’s crucial find, she finally goes too far. Enter Wheels, Pencil, Spider, and their fellow misfits in a spectacular display of teamwork aimed at teaching Miss Breakbone a lesson she won’t soon forget. From the incomparable Newbery Award winner Paul Fleischman comes a winning cast of underdogs — and one of the most terrifying teachers you’ll ever meet — brought to vivid life in David Roberts’s quirky, hilarious illustrations. Dunderheads, unite!
Paul Fleischman
Paul Fleischman (born 1952) is an American children’s author, and an author of books of all sorts. He grew up in Santa Monica, California, hearing his father, the children’s author Sid Fleischman, read his books aloud chapter by chapter, as they were written. Both have won the Newbery Medal, Sid for The Whipping Boy in 1987, and Paul for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices in 1989.
At 19, after two years of college in Berkeley, Fleischman took a cross-country bicycle and train trip, ending up living in a 200-year-old house in New Hampshire. The years there, living a modified 18th century lifestyle–wood heating, no electricity or phone–kindled an interest in the past and led to his historical fiction dealing with the Puritans’ Indian wars, colonial peddlers, Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic, and other topics.
His musical interests are reflected in his collections of poems for two and four speakers. Multiple points of view and a bridging of plays and prose have been hallmarks of his work, beginning with Bull Run, an account of the battle through the eyes of 16 different characters, continuing through Seedfolks, the 50-voice aural collage Seek, and Zap, which combines seven plays into one.
