Shelley Tanaka

Shelley Tanaka is a Canadian editor of numerous young adult novels, an author of non-fiction for children, a translator, and a writing teacher.
Biography
Shelley Tanaka was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She received an Honours bachelor's degree in English and German from Queen's University, and a master's degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
Tanaka began her editing career at Clarke Irwin. She has been the fiction editor at Groundwood Books, a Canadian children's book publisher, since 1983 and has edited books by many Canadian writers, including Tim Wynne-Jones, Deborah Ellis, Martha Brooks, Sarah Ellis and Alan Cumyn. She is the editor of thirteen Governor General's Award winning books.
Shelley Tanaka writes nonfiction for children, including books in the I Was There series and A Day That Changed America series. She has won numerous awards for her writing, among them the Orbis Pictus Award in 2009.
Her books have been translated into several languages: German, Danish, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese and Thai. Additionally, she has translated many children's picture books and novels from German and French into English.
Tanaka teaches in the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Awards
Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator won the Orbis Pictus Award in 2009.
Translation of Good for Nothing by Michel Noël was on the IBBY Honour List for translation in 2006.
Secrets of the Mummies won the Science in Society Children's Book Award in 2000.
Discovering the Iceman won the Mr. Christie's Book Award in 1997.
On Board the Titanic won the Silver Birch Award in 1997.
The Buried City of Pompei won the Information Book Award in 1997.
On Board the Titanic won the Information Book Award in 1996.
On Board the Titanic and The Buried City of Pompeii were finalists for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.
Bibliography
Novels
Nobody Knows, Novelization of the Japanese film by Hirokazu Kore-eda (2012)
Historical events
Earthquake! (2004)
Gettysburg (2003)
D-Day (2003)
The Alamo (2003)
Attack on Pearl Harbor (2001)
Lost Temple of the Aztecs (1998)
The Buried City of Pompeii (1996)
On Board the Titanic (1996)
The Disaster of the Hindenburg (1993
Biographies
Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator (2008)
In the Time of Knights (2000)
One More Border: The True Story of One Family’s Escape from War-Torn Europe, co-written with William Kaplan (1998)
Arts
Footnotes: Dancing the World's Best-Loved Ballets, co-written with Frank Augustyn (2001)
Environment
Climate Change (2006)
A Great Round Wonder: My Book of the World (1991)
The Heat Is On: Facing Our Energy Problem (1991)
Archaeology
Mummies: The Newest, Coolest & Creepiest from Around the World (2005)
New Dinos (2003)
Secrets of the Mummies (1999)
Graveyards of the Dinosaurs (1998)
Discovering the Iceman (1996)
Fiction
"Ghost Town" a short story in Dear Canada – Hoping for Home: Stories of Arrival (2011)
Earlier works
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, adapted for young readers (1998)
The Illustrated Father Goose (1995)
Mr. Dressup's Birthday Party Book (1988)
Mr. Dressup's 50 More Things to Make and Do, written with Ernie Coombs (1984, 1991)
Mr. Dressup's Things to Make and Do, written with Ernie Coombs (1982, 1991)
Michi's New Year (1980)
Books translated into English by Shelley Tanaka
French
The Birthday Party by Michel Aubin (1987)
The Secret Code by Michel Aubin (1987)
Himalaya by Tenzing Norbu Lama (2002)
Secret of the Snow Leopard by Tenzing Norbu Lama (2004)
Good for Nothing by Michel Nöel (2004)
Broken Memory by Élisabeth Combres (2009)
Grandfather and the Moon by Stéphanie Lapointe (2017)
German
The Fire: An Ethiopian Folk Tale by Heinz Janisch (Groundwood Books, 2002)
True Friends: Tales from Tanzania by John Kilaka (Groundwood, 2006), picture book
Girl from Mars by Tamara Bach (Groundwood, 2009)
Definitely Not for Little Ones: Some Very Grimm Fairy Tale Comics by Rotraut Susanne Berner (Groundwood, 2009)
Hound and Hare by Rotraut Susannne Berner (Groundwood, 2011)
References
Interviews
Ward, Barbara A. and Terrell A. Young. "Talking with Shelley Tanaka." Booklist Online. 2 June 2009.
Additional resources
Canadian Children's Book Centre. The Storymakers: Writing Children’s Books. Pembroke. 2000.
Gertridge, Allison. Meet Canadian Authors and Illustrators. Scholastic Canada. Revised edition 2002.
Rockman, Connie C., editor. Ninth Book of Junior Authors & Illustrators. New York: H.W. Wilson. 2004. .
External links
Living people
Children's non-fiction writers
Canadian children's writers
Canadian women children's writers
Canadian book editors
Canadian women editors
20th-century Canadian biographers
Canadian translators
French–English translators
German–English translators
Queen's University at Kingston alumni
Writers from Toronto
Canadian women non-fiction writers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Canadian women biographers
20th-century Canadian women writers
21st-century Canadian biographers
21st-century Canadian women writers