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Janet S. Wong is an American poet and author of children's books. She has written over 30 books, primarily poetry, picture books, and middle grade fiction. At the age of seven, she had an active imagination. She used this later in her life to write poetry and books. She is the co-creator, along with Sylvia Vardell, of The Poetry Friday Anthology series and the Poetry Friday Power Book series, published by Pomelo Books. Her most recent book is HOP TO IT: Poems to Get You Moving, an anthology of 100 poems by 90 poets that focuses on the topics of movement, the pandemic, and social justice. She is the winner of the 2021 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, a lifetime achievement honor considered the most prestigious award that a children's poet can receive.

Contents

• Personal life
• Career
• Works
• Picture books
• Additional Children's Books
• Poetry Collections
• Anthologies Created with Sylvia Vardell
• (Included in) Anthologies Edited by Others
• Awards
• References

Personal life

Wong was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Koreatown, as the child of a Chinese immigrant father and a Korean immigrant mother. Her parents met while her father was serving in the U.S. Army in Korea. She grew up not speaking Chinese or Korean, something she regrets and discusses when addressing a multilingual audience. When she was seven, her family moved to San Anselmo, California. This move from an urban area to a semi-rural/suburban area, where children would catch lizards after school, was featured in her book Minn and Jake.

Wong is married and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Career

During her junior year at UCLA, Wong went to France to study art history at the Université de Bordeaux. When she returned from France, she co-founded the UCLA Immigrant Children's Art Project, an initiative to encourage refugees to express themselves through art.

Wong graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in history in 1983, and later attended Yale Law School while occasionally working as a substitute teacher. She graduated from Yale Law School with a J.D. in 1987. ^[1]

Prior to becoming an author, Wong practiced corporate and labor law as Director of Labor Relations at Universal Studios Hollywood.

While browsing in a book store, looking for a gift for her baby cousin, she fell in love with picture books and decided she wanted to try writing them herself. The first thing she wrote, however, was a middle grade novel that she never sent to any publishers. She then wrote a picture book manuscript every week. After receiving many rejection letters, she realized that she needed to work on her craft. In 1991, she decided to attend a writing class in poetry taught by Myra Cohn Livingston through UCLA Extension. She spent eighteen months honing her craft and attending writing classes before she was able to publish her first book, Good Luck Gold and Other Poems. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

Works

Awards

Won

• 1997 Claremont Stone Center for Children's Books - Recognition of Merit Award
• 2000 Penn State University - Lee Bennett Hopkins Award Honor
• 2001 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature for The Trip Back Home
• 2001-2003 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature for Apple Pie 4th of July
• 2005 IRA Celebrate Literacy Award
• 2021 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children [a lifetime achievement award for a poet's body of work, and the most prestigious award given to a children's poet]
• Featured in annual Best Books, Notable Books, and other award lists of the American Library Association (YALSA), Bank Street College, L.A. Times, and N.Y. Times

References