About
Joanna Szeto
Children's Book Author
Joanna is a writer, teacher, and mother. She has taught for over 20 years with her first 13 years at a newcomer school. She had less than one year to get her fifth grader students reading, writing, and ready for middle school when some of them barely knew their letter sounds.
During this time She got National Board Certified in English as a New Language. Then she transferred to a nearby school to teach kindergarten. She started writing my little Chinese readers to help her kindergarteners learn Chinese. Now She teaches a Cantonese bilingual 4th grade class.
Joanna was born in Hong Kong and came to America as a baby. She is an immigrant without the memories of one. She feels like an American Born Chinese without actually being born here. A lot of her stories deal with identity.
As a child, she loved to watch Chinese dramas and movies, but she hated learning Chinese. Learning Chinese in Chinese school was boring. She didn’t do well in Chinese school.
Joanna loves reading, especially all kinds of fiction: mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, adventure, and animal stories. She has a huge collection of Hardy Boys Case Files.
Joanna loves watching television just as much, sometimes even more than reading. Her favorites are science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and wuxia. That’s how she kept her Chinese alive. It’s also how she learned Mandarin.
While going to college, Joanna almost lost all her Chinese. She decided to keep it alive by becoming a Cantonese bilingual teacher. She spent 13 years teaching newcomer Chinese students how to learn English. Then she spent the next 2 years teaching kindergarteners how to learn Chinese. Now she teaches fourth grade.
Lesson Plans was written when she was still teaching at the newcomer school. In the story, Dylan hates doing homework. His mom decides to trade jobs with him. She does his homework while he teaches her class for a day. The class of students Dylan teaches attend the newcomer school.
Joanna enjoys writing stories that feature characters similar to her students. Many of her characters are recent immigrants or heritage learners who share the same struggles as everyone else in the world.
Joanna also loves writing humorous stories about animals.
She grew up with a stuffed Raccoon. One of her favorite books is Rascal. Although she hasn’t written any raccoon stories yet, she has written quite a few about cows, chickens, ducks, elephants, robins, foxes, sea otters, dolphins, cats, dogs, and mice.
Here is one of her cats looking for a new friend.
