Amy M. Pollack - Coming of Age Book Series by a Retired Teacher and Grandparent: The Adventures of Jelly Bean & The Further Adventures of Jelly Bean. This is episode 635 of Teaching Learning Leading K12, an audio podcast.
Amy Meislin Pollack was a teacher for over four decades, raised three children, and loves to play with her seven grandchildren. From her own childhood to the classroom and as a parent and grandparent, she is perfectly positioned to pen her coming-of-age book series.
The Adventures of Jelly Bean, followed by The Further Adventures of Jelly Bean, first came into being when the author's fourth-grade teacher used to ask her to get up in front of the class and tell the stories about this character she would make up as she went along. 
Several years later she started writing these stories down and would work on them periodically in any free time she had during her teaching career and raising her three children. 
Now retired from a 40-year career in teaching - spanning a wide range of subjects and grade levels - she has embarked on a lively writing career.
The silver lining of the Covid pandemic for Pollack was that she was more or less forced, after approximately 60 years, to finish her Jelly Bean books.
Her books are about a young girl whose life is always changing and how she adapts to these changes. She tries to work out relationships with her friends, her parents, her older brothers, her uncle. Her parents do not want her best friend, who is of mixed race, to visit. Another friend is anorexic. One brother drops out of school. A grandparent dies.
Pollack earned a BA in English from Goucher College in Baltimore and received her Master’s in English from University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She was certified as a secondary education and reading specialist for grades K-12 and earned a special education teaching degree from NYU, allowing her to teach disabled students. 
For six years she was a professor of writing, and a teacher in the tutoring center at Montclair State University in NJ.  She lives in central New Jersey with her husband and their dog named Bunny.  For more information, please see her website, www.amypollack.com.
About The Adventures of Jelly Bean:
What if the start to your day was falling into the toilet, which caused you to miss your carpool, that in turn caused you to get to school late, that ultimately caused you to miss getting one of the decent parts in the upcoming Thanksgiving play? That is exactly what happens to fourth-grader Jelly. Bean on the day we first meet her. Things only go downhill from there and no one at home seems to have much time for her. Except Roger-Over, her beloved dog.
About The Further Adventures of Jelly Bean:
Jelly Bean in the continuation of her adventures as she seeks solutions to the challenges that confronted her in book 1. Michael, her oldest brother, has dropped out of school and joined the Marines, which usurps much of her parents' attention. Kylie, the new girl in school, faces a medical emergency. And Jelly Bean is still forbidden from going to her best friend's house.
She has to decide how to deal with these dilemmas and more. Along the way she learns about love, death, pain, relationships, the difference between right and wrong and the value of friendship. See the world through the eyes of this forthright fourth grader as she discovers two truths about life - that it is always complicated, and always changing.
Awesome conversation!
Cool books!
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