Sandell, Lisa Ann 1977-

Personal

Born 1977, in Wilmington, DE; married Liel Leibovitz (a writer). Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A. (English and medieval and Renaissance literature; with honors).

Addresses

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—lisaannsandell@lisaannsandell.com.

Career

Editor, educator, and author. Jerusalem Report, Jerusalem, Israel, intern, 1999-2000; Orchard Books, New York, NY, senior editor, 2000—; Hunter College, City University of New York, member of faculty, 2005—.

Writings

The Weight of the Sky, Viking Children's Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Song of the Sparrow, Scholastic Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of short fiction to anthology 21 Proms, Point (New York, NY), 2007.

Sidelights

Lisa Ann Sandell's first book is loosely based on the author's own experience in Israel where she lived on a kibbutz—a communal farm—for three months following her junior year of college. "It was an amazing experience being there" noted Sandell on her home page, "not knowing anyone else, working with my hands. Israel is a beautiful country, in spite of the political mess. I fell in love with it, and it was this summer that provided the basis for my first novel, The Weight of the Sky."

The Weight of the Sky is a coming-of-age novel that centers on sixteen-year-old Sarah Green, a Jewish American who struggles with her identity. Sarah attends a small high school in Pennsylvania and, as one of the few Jewish students, battles with being different. Sarah's identity as misplaced changes, however, when her parents send her to Israel one summer. Working on a kibbutz, Sarah learns to appreciate both her cultural heritage and the beauty of the Israeli landscape.

Sandell wrote The Weight of the Sky in verse, transferring the physical beauty of Israel into a lyrical language. She balanced this lyricism with realism, however, incorporating elements of the small nation's ongoing political turmoil into her novel as well. Kliatt contributor Michelle Winship, in a review of The Weight of the Sky, noted that the Israeli landscape is "painted in carefully crafted poetry, but the tension and tentativeness of today's Israel is never far from the surface." Rachel Kamin, writing in School Library Journal, praised Sandell's debut work as a well-paced novel that "captures the voice of a typical American teen."

Sandell's second young-adult novel, Song of the Sparrow, is also written in free verse and retells the story of the Lady of Shalott, a figure from the legends of King Arthur. "It was thrilling to have the opportunity to make a contribution to this cannon, to write about my favorite characters," explained the author, a student of medieval and Renaissance literature during college. "But, I also

wanted to change something: As I read more and more stories about Arthur and his companions, and began to seriously study Arthurian lore, I started to notice that the girls and women in these stories were not always treated very kindly. At best, it seemed to me, they were damsels in distress who needed a man to rescue them, and at worse, they were chaperones of doom and destruction.

This did not seem fair to me.

"And so, I aimed to humanize the characers, to really scrutinize them with a twenty-first-century magnifying glass and imagine how they might actually have related to one another. As I imagined Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, who truly has suffered at the hands of male writers, I wanted to give her strength and power and relevance. And indeed, it is without a sword that she manages to save her friends and loved ones.

"I have always loved the romance and chivalry that fill the Arthurian stories," Sandell concluded, "but the ideals of freedom and equality and justice are truly what make this mythology so important and continually resonant.

The stories of Arthur and his knights have given centuries of readers hope—hope for peace—and I can only wish that readers of Song of the Sparrow take away the same hope."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Kliatt, March, 2006, Michele Winship, review of The Weight of the Sky, p. 16.

School Library Journal, April, 2006, Rachel Kamin, review of The Weight of the Sky, p. 148.

ONLINE

Lisa Ann Sandell Home Page,http://www.lisaannsandell.com (November 29, 2006).

Teen Reads Too,http://www.teensreadtoo.com (November 29, 2006), interview with Sandell.