I'm first and foremost a writer for kids, because I think kids are fantastic, amazing, wonderful and a whole
bunch of other great things. But that doesn't mean that my stories are for kids only. Every story has a gift
for the one who comes to it with an open heart, no matter that person's age.
As a person of mixed race, I often feel like that mysterious color that closes the chasm between day and
night, sun and moon. It's an inky, ocean blue that makes your heart ache with the hope that there's
something beyond what we can see, for as incredible as this world is, it is also full of turmoil. I try to
hold both realities in my hands as I write, even as I hold both my races in my heart.
Thanks for dropping by, and whether you're nine or ninety, I hope you enjoy my stories!
– Sundee
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Delacorte Press/Random House, Inc., 2010
Mama was always pointing out that of the millions of genes that made them all human, only seven or eight
told their skin what color to be. A minuscule amount, she said. A very small difference.
So that was what Minni chose to believe, even though somewhere deep inside her brain, in a little drawer
she rarely let herself open, lived the concern that the difference she'd been assured didn't matter actually
mattered a lot. That what she'd been told was small might be enormous. Not here, with her family in the sky.
Never here. But somewhere. Maybe even everywhere except here.
A tingle ran down Minni's spine as Daddy dipped the right wing and circled over the town below. She squeezed
her sister's hand and made an early birthday wish: May nothing ever, ever come between Keira and me.
Nothing — big or small.
Read more about The Other Half of My Heart
 "Funny and deeply affecting…Never didactic,
this is the richest portrait of multiracial identity and family since Virginia Hamilton's 1976 novel
Arilla Sun Down. An outstanding achievement." —Kirkus Reviews
"A novel with a great deal of heart indeed . . ." —Booklist
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An interview I did appeared in Real Change News this week. This is more than just a newspaper here in Seattle. It's a societal change agent with a mission to empower the homeless and unemployed. Check it out!
Al's Book Club for Kids: I had the opportunity to appear on the TODAY Show as one of Al Roker's book-of-the-month authors. To check out the segment (about four minutes), click here.
Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award: This incredible award from the American Librarian Association initiated much of the wonderful attention my first novel has received. Here's the official press release from the original announcement.
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