Laura Toffler-Corrie

Laura Toffler-Corrie is a freelance writer who has written for publications such as Parenting, Twins, New Age Journal, Hudson Valley, and a number of others. She holds an M.S. in school psychology, as well as an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from New York University. She has taught writing classes at New York University, Brooklyn College and Pace University. Laura lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband, twin daughters and a large, noisy variety of pets ranging from five pounds to seven hundred pounds (the really heavy pets live in the yard). Laura’s hilarious debut middle-grade novel, The Life and Opinions of Amy Finawitz, will be published by Roaring Brook Press in Fall 2010.

 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ (Roaring Brook, Fall 2010)

It can’t get any worse for Amy Finawitz. Her best friend, Callie, has abandoned their life in New York City to stay with relatives in Kansas for the year, leaving Amy to cope with eighth grade alone. Thankfully—or not—God sends Amy a replacement friend in the form of Miss Sophia, the little old lady who lives down the hall. Miss Sophia hooks Amy into solving a decades old mystery left in a very old diary. The dynamic duo soon becomes a Terrific Triumvirate when Miss Sophia also asks her fifteen-year-old nephew, Beryl, a Lubavitch Jew, to join their little investigative team.

And if Amy thought her year couldn't get anymore random, she can add the following items to her list: Houdini’s grave, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, cross-dressing magicians, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, crochet circles, Abraham Lincoln, a raucous rendition of Fiddler on the Roof, and a secret treasure.

To get through it all, Amy's going to need a serious Chanukah miracle.