I received this tragic news via the YALSA listserv today:

Author Janet McDonald passed away last Wednesday, apparently from cancer. There was a memorial service for her today in Paris where she was a resident.

Some biographical information: Janet McDonald was raised in the projects with a genius IQ and eventually became a member of Mensa International. She was originally a French major at Vassar and spent her junior year in Paris where she eventually took residence. Later, she earned a Master’s in Journalism at Columbia University and her Juris Doctor at New York University Law School. She preferred writing books for young adults to practicing law and gave us her memoir Project Girl (an LA Times Best Book of 1999), Spellbound (an ALA Best YA Novel for 2001), Chill Wind (Winner of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award, 2002, Brother Hood (2004) and her latest book, Harlem Hustle (2006). Her final novel, Off Color, will be published this November by Francis Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A warm and personal remembering has bee posted on the blog of the publisher of the Horn Book magazine.

May her light shine perpetual!