''The Schwa Was Here'' is a

young adult A young adult is generally a person in the years following adolescence. Definitions and opinions on what qualifies as a young adult vary, with works such as Erik Erikson's stages of human development significantly influencing the definition of ...

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself ...

Neal Shusterman Neal Shusterman (born November 12, 1962) is an American writer of young-adult fiction. He won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his book ''Challenger Deep'' and his novel, ''Scythe'', was a 2017 '' Michael L. Prin ...

, published by

Dutton Penguin E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group. Creator Edward Payson Dutton (January 4, ...

in 2004. It is about an eighth-grader's friendship with another student named Calvin Schwa, who goes almost completely unnoticed by the people around him.

Inspiration

Neal Shusterman stated in an interview that he was inspired to write the book upon doing a Q&A in a school, and not noticing a kid with his hand raised in the middle of the group. Remarking in the interview that upon noticing this he thought, "I want to write a story about an unnoticeable kid and we were in the school library and he was sitting in front of the big dictionary and I thought, well, this kid is kind of like a

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

— that unnoticeable sound in the English language. And that's where the idea came from."

Reception

The book received critical acclaim upon its release, receiving a starred review from ''

School Library Journal ''School Library Journal'' (''SLJ'') is an American monthly magazine containing reviews and other articles for school librarians, media specialists, and public librarians who work with young people. Articles cover a wide variety of topics, with ...

'' and a positive review from ''

Booklist ''Booklist'' is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. ''Booklist''s primary audience consists of libraries, educators, and booksellers. The magazine is av ...

''. It also received the 2005 ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Gl ...

''/''

Horn Book Magazine ''The Horn Book Magazine'', founded in Boston in 1924, is the oldest bimonthly magazine dedicated to reviewing children's literature. It began as a "suggestive purchase list" prepared by Bertha Mahony Miller and Elinor Whitney Field, proprietres ...

'' award for fiction and poetry.

Adaptations

The book has reportedly been optioned by

The Disney Channel Disney Channel, sometimes known as simply Disney, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Com ...

for a telefilm project. Shusterman, who worked with the channel on the project ''

Pixel Perfect The native resolution of an LCD, LCoS or other flat panel display refers to its single fixed resolution. As an LCD consists of a fixed raster, it cannot change resolution to match the signal being displayed, while black and white CRT moni ...

'', was lined up to write the script for the project.Kimberly Nordyke:
'Schwa' noticed by Disney Channel.
''Hollywood Reporter'', 14 November 2006. It has also been adapted into a three act play by Kory Howard, and was performed for the first time ever in February 2017, by the Manti High School Theatre Department.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schwa Was Here, The American young adult novels 2004 American novels Dutton Penguin books