CANR
WORK TITLE: INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.nicolayoon.com/#intro
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: LRC 2017
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/30/435500605/the-glimmering-sheen-of-a-wide-world-seen-from-inside-a-bubble
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1972, in Kingston, Jamaica; married; husband’s name David (an author); children: one daughter.
EDUCATION:Graduate of Cornell Univeristy; attended Master of Creative Writing program at Emerson College.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Novelist. Previously worked as a jewelry designer. Associated with the We Need Diverse Books campaign; co-publisher, with husband David, of Joy Revolution, Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color.
AWARDS:National Book Award finalist, 2016, Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award and Michael L. Printz honor book, both 2017, all for for The Sun Is Also a Star.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies.
Everything, Everything was adapted for a featre film, 2017, by Warner Brothers and MGM; The Sun Is Also a Star was adapted for a feature film 2019, by Warner Brothers and MGM.
SIDELIGHTS
Born 1972 in Kingston, Jamaica, New York Times Bestselling young adult novelist Nicola Yoon grew up in Montego Bay and Brooklyn, New York. She now lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband, an illustrator and author, and her daughter. Yoon previously worked as a jewelry designer.
Yoon’s debut novel, Everything, Everything, features illustrations by her husband, David Yoon. The volume tells the story of Madeline (Maddy), a biracial teenager, who suffers from a medical condition in which everything in the outside world causes her to have an allergic reaction. She is unable to leave her home and only interacts with her nurse, Carla, and her mother. Maddy has a close relationship with both women and feels supported by them. Yoon explained her decision to depict a positive mother-daughter relationship in an interview with Rachel Simon on the Bustle website: “I really wanted to focus on strong female relationships, women who are there for each other. … So many times teenage girls get made fun of, or people say they only care about boys or stuff like that. I didn’t want that to be a part of this book. I wanted to say, women love each other and take care of each other, and teenage girls are worth taking care of and loving.” Maddy has grown accustomed to being forced to stay indoors and has even accepted her fate. However, she becomes inspired to experience the outside world when she begins observing her new neighbor, a handsome teenage boy named Olly. Yoon described Maddy’s first impression of Olly in an interview with Arun Rath, excerpts of which were posted on the National Public Radio website. She remarked: “Madeleine is in her house, and she sort of daydreams out the window sometimes. And one day a moving truck comes by, and a new family moves in. This supercute boy comes out. He’s dressed in black. He does parkour, so he’s very physical in a way that Madeleine is not. You know, he’s very a part of his body, whereas her body sort of traps her—so she immediately notices him across the street.” Olly and Maddy begin exchanging online messages and develop romantic feelings for each other. They take a trip to Maui, despite the dangers it poses for Maddy’s health and the consequences it may have for Olly and his relationship with his abusive father.
In an interview with M.J. Franklin that appeared on the Mashable website, Yoon discussed Maddy’s race and diversity in books: “When I decided that Madeline was biracial, it was completely personal. I wanted my daughter to be able to see someone who looks like her when she read this book. I didn’t really have that until much later in life, and that was really important to me.” Yoon summed up the book’s themes in an interview with a contributor to the Huffington Post website: “For me, it’s really about all of the risks you take for love and whether or not those risks are worth it, whether or not love is worth it. Because, I feel like, everyone has been in love or loved someone or something just so much that it takes over your life. But then the question for me is always what if you lose it? Then, you know, how does life continue? Are you able to continue?” She added: “The risk of losing love could be devastating. I definitely think that’s what the book is about. Love in all of its forms, and the risk that you take by being in love and whether it’s worth it.”
Booklist reviewer Jennifer Barnes described Everything, Everything as “a book that teens in search of a swoon-worthy read will devour.” “This heartwarming story transcends the ordinary by exploring the hopes, dreams, and inherent risks of love in all of its forms,” suggested a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. Jodeana Kruse, a critic in School Library Journal, asserted: “ Everything, Everything is wonderful, wonderful.”
The Sun Is Also a Star
In 2016, Yoon published her second novel, The Sun Is Also a Star, about high school senior Natasha, an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, who believes in the facts derived from science and wants to go to college to study physics. But when her father is arrested for drunk driving, her family faces deportation immediately. However that day, she happens to meet a cute boy, Daniel, who believes in destiny and love at first sight. His South Korean parents are pressuring him to apply to Yale medical school, yet he’d rather write poetry.
“The teens’ alternating first-person narrations are fresh and compelling, and interspersed throughout are relevant third-person omniscient musings,” said Kazia Berkley-Cramer in the Horn Book. As love between Natasha and Daniel grows, they spend a day together telling each other their stories, aware that Natasha could be deported that night unless she can get an immigration lawyer to help. Writing in Bookpage, reviewer Norah Piehl said: “Suspense builds, not only surrounding Daniel and Natasha’s romance, but also concerning their individual futures.” In School Library Journal, Kristin Anderson commented: “Both relatable and profound, the bittersweet ending conveys a sense of hopefulness that will resonate with teens.”
Yoon “lays bare the hopes, dreams and regrets of everyone from family members to complete strangers,” according to Entertainment Weekly Online writer Nivea Serrao. To round out the theme of science versus destiny, Yoon throws in information on the quantum theory of multiverses and a chemical history of love. Commenting that the book is carefully plotted and distinctly narrated in the voices of the two youths, Booklist contributor Heather Booth observed: “It also allows space for the lives that are swirling around them, from security guards to waitresses to close relatives.”
To get the Korean family experience right, Yoon interviewed her own husband’s family. “I know a lot about it because my child is half Korean and we’ve been together for such a long time,” said Yoon in an interview with Camryn Garrett in Huffington Post. “There were still things for me to learn and to know. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t screw it up, from a representation standpoint, but also from a factual standpoint,” Yoon added. The book was named a National Book Award finalist in the Young People’s Literature category, and was a starred review in Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly.
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Instructions for Dancing
Yoon’s third YA novel, Instructions for Dancing, was published in 2021. The novel follows high school senior Evie Thomas, who is trying to deal with her parents’ divorce. She has always thought of them as the most solid couple and one that is her own inspiration for finding lasting love. Thus, she is having trouble processing the dissolution of their marriage. Her ideas of romance are shattered and she leaves her romance novels at a free library where she meets a woman who strongly advises Evie to take a book in return, Instructions for Dancing. This book leads her to a dance studio run by an older couple. Their grandson, Xavier, called simply X, is a handsome young man, very much the opposite of Evie, open to life’s adventures where Evie tends to be cautious, not very daring. They form a duo to take part in a dance contest. Meanwhile, Evie discovers a strange new power. She is able to envision how a romance will begin and how it will end. She does not think she is ready for romance, especially knowing how relationships will end, but she is drawn to X and he to her, and ultimately they spend more time off the dance floor together than on. But Evie continues to wonder if love is really worth the risk. Finally, however, she does learn the steps not only to their dance, but to her heart. She opens herself not only to X, but reconciles with her father, whom she blames for her parents’ divorce.
A Kirkus Reviews critic had high praise for Instructions for Dancing, noting: “The elements of fabulism deliver an unexpected twist, presenting the question of whether love is worth the pain of loss. A remarkable, irresistible love story that will linger long after readers turn the final page.” Similarly, an online Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that Yoon “delivers a story of love’s unpredictability and the importance of perspective that unfolds with ease and heart.”
Speaking with online Entertainment Weekly contributor Samantha Highfill, Yoon remarked that the inspiration for the novel came partly form her mother’s poor health beginning in 2017. “[S]he’s been wildly sick up and down since then, so this book a little bit came out of that,” Yoon commented. The author further noted: “The question I was trying to figure out was: You love people and you love them so intensely and we’re going to lose them, and do you still want to take that chance? Do you still want to keep loving people, is it worth it? It’s one of the questions I always ask myself. You can’t help but loving people but what if you could? … Would you choose to love anyway? … That’s really where [this novel] comes from, and then I had this idea of: If a person can see the end of all relationships, what does it mean for their own?”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 2015, Jennifer Barnes, review of Everything, Everything, p. 74; August 1, 2016, Heather Booth, review of The Sun Is Also a Star, p. 64.
Bookpage, November 2016, Norah Piehl, review of The Sun Is Also a Star, p. 43.
Horn Book, November-December 2016, Kazia Berkley-Cramer, review of The Sun Is Also a Star, p. 92.
Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2015, review of Everything, Everything; March 15, 2021, review of Instructions for Dancing.
Publishers Weekly, June 15, 2015, review of Everything, Everything, p. 84.
School Library Journal, October 19, 2015, Jodeana Kruse, review of Everything, Everything, p. 111; August 2016, Kristin Anderson, review of The Sun Is Also a Star, p. 118.
Seventeen, October 19, 2015, Sasha Alsberg, review of Everything, Everything, p. 24.
ONLINE
Bustle, http://www.bustle.com/ (June 16, 2015), Rachel Simon, author interview.
Entertainment Weekly Online, http://www.ew.com/ (August 14, 2015), review of Everything, Everything; (October 6, 2016), Isabella Biedenharn, “National Book Award finalists include Colson Whitehead, Nicola Yoon;” (November 2, 2016), Nivea Serrao, review of The Sun Is Also a Star; (January 27, 2021), Samantha Highfill, “Nicola Yoon to Release Third Book, Instructions For Dancing, in June.”
Fantastic Fiction, http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/ (November 9, 2015), author profile.
Guardian Online, http://www.theguardian.com/ (October 8, 2015), review of Everything, Everything.
Hollywood Reporter Online, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ (August 26, 2015), article about Everything, Everything.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (September 2, 2015), author interview; (November 1, 2016), Camryn Garrett, author interview
Mashable, http://mashable.com/ (August 26, 2015), M.J. Franklin, author interview.
National Public Radio Online, http://www.npr.org/ (August 30, 2015), Arun Rath, author interview.
Nicola Yoon website, http://www.nicolayoon.com (April 29, 2021).
Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (April 15, 2021), review of Instructions for Dancing.
The Official Version
Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Instructions for Dancing, Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner. Two of her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She’s also co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.
The Unofficial Version
I believe in love. Really, truly.
I'm kind of a hopeless romantic.
I'm a proud member of the We Need Diverse Books team.
In a former life I made jewelry. You can see some of it here.
I love Karoake, but I cannot sing. I. Am. The. Worst. My song of choice is “Making Love out of Nothing at all” by Air Supply, because AIR SUPPLY.
My husband makes custom notebooks. They are pretty popular.
I hand write my first drafts.
I was (am and always will be) a late bloomer.
In a former life I was French. I could live entirely on wine & cheese.
Or maybe Korean because I could live on Kimchi & Galbi too.
Nicola Yoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Nicola Yoon
Nationality American
Alma mater Emerson College
Occupation Author
Notable work
Everything, Everything, The Sun Is Also a Star
Spouse(s) David Yoon
Website nicolayoon.com
Nicola Yoon /ˈnɪkələ/ is a Jamaican-American author. She is best known for writing the 2015 young adult novel Everything, Everything, a New York Times best seller and the basis of a 2017 film of the same name. In 2016, she released The Sun Is Also a Star, a novel that was adapted to a film.
Contents
1 Early life and education
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Works
5 References
6 External links
Early life and education
Yoon grew up in Jamaica and in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2] She majored in electrical engineering as an undergraduate at Cornell University. Taking a creative writing class as an elective got her "hooked on writing".[3] After graduation, she attended the Master of Creative Writing program at Emerson College.
Career
Yoon worked as a programmer for investment management firms for 20 years before the publication of her first book.[4] She was inspired to write her debut novel, Everything, Everything, after the birth of her biracial daughter. Yoon wanted to write a book that reflected her child on the pages.[3][5] Her first-time mother worries about protecting her baby from danger gave her the idea to write a story about a 17-year-old girl who needed the same level of protection.[6][7] It took Yoon three years to write the book, writing early in the mornings while working full-time and raising her infant daughter.[3][6] Her husband, Korean American graphic designer David Yoon, drew the illustrations.[3][6][8]
Everything, Everything was released in September 2015, and debuted as No. 1 New York Times best seller for young adult hardcover books.[6][9] The book spent 40 weeks on the best seller list.[10] A film of the same name based on the book, adapted by J. Mills Goodloe and starring Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson, was released in May 2017.[11]
Yoon's second book, The Sun Is Also a Star, was released in November 2016, and also reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller list.[12] It was a 2016 National Book Award finalist,[13] was included in The New York Times Book Review list of Notable Children's Books of 2016,[14] and was listed in the top 10 books of 2016 by Entertainment Weekly[15] and the Los Angeles Times.[16] The Sun Is Also A Star was honored as a finalist of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award in 2017. In December 2016, it was announced that film rights to the book had been acquired by Warner Brothers and MGM.[17] The movie, directed by Ry Russo-Young, and starring Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, was released on May 17, 2019.[18]
Yoon is associated with the We Need Diverse Books organization, which promotes the representation of diversity in literature.[8][19][20]
She contributed to Because You Love to Hate Me, an anthology of short stories written by 13 YA authors who were paired with 13 BookTubers, who provided writing prompts. It was published in July 2017.[21]
Personal life
Yoon lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband David Yoon and daughter.[1][2]
Works
Everything, Everything. Delacorte Press. 2015. ISBN 9780553496642.
The Sun Is Also a Star. Delacorte Press. 2016. ISBN 9780553496680. Winner of the 2017 John Steptoe Award for New Talent.[22]
Blackout. Quill Tree Books. 2021. ISBN 978-0063088092. (co-authored with Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Angie Thomas[23]
QUOTE: "[S]he's been wildly sick up and down since then, so this book a little bit came out of that," Yoon commented. The author further noted: "The question I was trying to figure out was: You love people and you love them so intensely and we're going to lose them, and do you still want to take that chance? Do you still want to keep loving people, is it worth it? It's one of the questions I always ask myself. You can't help but loving people but what if you could? ... Would you choose to love anyway? ... That's really where it comes from, and then I had this idea of: If a person can see the end of all relationships, what does it mean for their own?"
Nicola Yoon to release third book, Instructions For Dancing, in June
EW has an exclusive first look at the cover and a chat with the author
By Samantha Highfill January 27, 2021 at 12:00 PM EST
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https://ew.com/books/nicola-yoon-new-book-instructions-for-dancing-cover/
Nicola Yoon is back! The New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star — both of which have been turned into films — is getting ready to release her first book in nearly five years.
Her latest, Instructions for Dancing, follows a young girl named Evie as she deals with her parents' divorce and finds herself with a new ability that might change the way she handles the relationships in her life. EW has an exclusive first look at the book's cover below, as well as a chat with Yoon about what we can expect when Instructions for Dancing is released on June 1, 2021.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did the idea for Instructions for Dancing come from?
NICOLA YOON: My mom has been very sick since 2017. The Everything, Everything movie came out, my mom was in the hospital the night of the premiere, and she's been wildly sick up and down since then, so this book a little bit came out of that. The question I was trying to figure out was: You love people and you love them so intensely and we're going to lose them, and do you still want to take that chance? Do you still want to keep loving people, is it worth it? It's one of the questions I always ask myself. You can't help but loving people but what if you could? [Laughs] Would you choose to love anyway? What's the saying, it's better to have loved than lost than never to have loved at all. Well, I don't know about that. [Laughs] That's really where it comes from, and then I had this idea of: If a person can see the end of all relationships, what does it mean for their own?
So how does that question translate to Evie's story?
She is having a hard time because her parents have gotten divorced. She used to think of her parents as being the ultimate couple. They were her inspiration for her own imaginings of what her own love life could be like. And then one day she meets this mysterious bookseller and gains the ability to see people's relationships and the history of their relationships. She sees all the highlights, so when they meet, the things that are significant to them, and then she sees the ending. The thing she notes to herself is that everything always ends. Then of course she meets this very cute boy because you have to. [Laughs] Seeing people's endings leads her to a ballroom dance class where she meets this boy. He calls himself X. And they have to dance together and that is where I shall leave it.
Is X a dancer or also just in the class?
He's just in this class. His grandparents are the ones who own the studio and so they're basically doing the grandparents a favor by getting to this ballroom dance contest, but he's actually a rocker. He's the lead singer of a band, so that I could get all my rock 'n roll boy fantasies into the world. [Laughs]
Instructions for Dancing
CREDIT: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
How does Evie compare to your other leading ladies?
She's a little more cynical and sarcastic. She's skeptical of the world, which is how I was feeling. [Laughs] Maddy in Everything, Everything so wanted the world, she so wanted to be open to it and to be allowed into it. And Natasha, her world was being taken away from her so she was trying to hold onto something. Evie's a little different, she's like, "I don't trust the world at all so I'm going to hold everything a little bit away from me."
You're coming off two very successful books, both of which have become movies. Did you feel a sense of pressure when writing this one to do something a little different? How do you balance staying true to what people love about your writing while still surprising them?
I actually wrote a book before this one that I honestly don't think will ever see the light of day. It was a very, very, very sad book where I was deep in my emotions and I could not see my way through to a story. It was mostly one emotion and that emotion was grief. Because that book failed ultimately, and I had to put it back into the metaphorical drawer, I think that it helped me get past the self-consciousness of having two successful books in a weird way. It was a book that didn't work because I was too grief-ridden and then it failed and that's the worst thing that could happen, so then when I wrote this book, I was so much freer. I worry about it now, but I wasn't worried about it during the writing. Now I'm kind of like, "Oh God, I hope people like this book." [Laughs]
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
QUOTE: "The elements of fabulism deliver an unexpected twist, presenting the question of whether love is worth the pain of loss. A remarkable, irresistible love story that will linger long after readers turn the final page."
Yoon, Nicola INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING Delacorte (Teen None) $16.99 6, 1 ISBN: 978-1-5247-1896-1
A girl’s views on love and heartbreak are full of confusion—and then a dance book leads her to romance.
High school senior Evie Thomas thought she had the perfect family until she caught her dad with another woman. Formerly a genuine romantic, she is devastated. Even as her mother and sister appear to move on, she leaves her romance novels at a Little Free Library, where she meets a mysterious woman who insists she take the book Instructions for Dancing. It leads her to a dance studio run by an elegant older couple who have an attractive grandson, Xavier, who goes by X. Evie and X start practicing to represent the studio in a dance contest—as well as spending time together off the dance floor building a connection that will improve their performance. Meantime, Evie has been having visions that show her when and how people’s relationships will end. Despite herself, she falls for X and allows herself to reconcile with her father. Evie is guarded and careful while X is passionate and intrepid; both are likable characters whom readers will instantly love. Main characters in this richly textured novel featuring clever dialogue and expert pacing are Black; it includes diverse secondary characters who are interesting and fully realized. The elements of fabulism deliver an unexpected twist, presenting the question of whether love is worth the pain of loss.
A remarkable, irresistible love story that will linger long after readers turn the final page. (Romance. 12-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Yoon, Nicola: INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A654727628/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=65b47716. Accessed 10 Apr. 2021.
QUOTE: "delivers a story of love’s unpredictability and the importance of perspective that unfolds with ease and heart."
Instructions for Dancing
Nicola Yoon. Delacorte, $19.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-5247-1896-1
MORE BY AND ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
After her parents’ divorce, romance enthusiast Evie Thomas, 17, swears off love. Donating the last of her romance book collection in the process, she comes across a neighborhood library box and a mysterious woman who encourages her to take a book for herself. Evie doesn’t think much of the volume, Instruc-tions for Dancing, but realizes that something strange is occurring when she sees her sister, Danica, kissing her boyfriend, and has a vision of both how they got together and how they’ll break up. After Evie sees the romantic fates of other kissing couples, her best friend urges her to visit the “please return to” address in the book—the La Brea Dance studio. There, Evie is sucked in by the magnetic owners, fiery instructor Fifi and the owners’ grandson, X, and is persuaded to join the LA Danceball competition to help the studio gain clients. With X as her partner, she learns the steps to leading with her heart. With deadpan humor, realistically wrought relationships among the Black principal cast, and a well-executed fantastical element, Yoon (Everything, Everything) delivers a story of love’s unpredictability and the importance of perspective that unfolds with ease and heart. Ages 12–up. Agents: Sara Shandler and Joelle Hobeika, Alloy Entertainment. (June)
DETAILS
Reviewed on : 04/15/2021
Release date: 06/01/2021
Genre: Children's