Biography on s.e. hinton

After another span of four years, S. Hinton's son Nick was born. Four years after Tex was released, quite a few major events took place in S. Hinton's life. In March of , the movie The Outsiders was released. The following August, Nicholas David was born. Two months later the movie Rumble Fish was released. Three years later S. Taming The Star Runner was released in October of that year.

It was the first book that S. Hinton had published that wasn't in first person. With a seven-year wait, S. Viking signed her up for a small advance and the book was published when she was But librarians and teachers made it a best seller, and a landmark. It's second only to "Charlotte's Web" as the most popular children's book. Used only her initials instead of her full name, Susan Eloise, because the publishers felt that reviewers would automatically dismiss the book "The Outsiders" because a girl had written it.

This Is Now , Emilio Estevez , who also wrote the movie. If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. San Diego Union-Tribune. Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 2, Retrieved June 13, Hinton and the Y. The New Yorker.

Harry Potter made it inescapable". Retrieved September 26, Archived from the original on October 13, Retrieved January 28, Hinton: An Outsider, Out of the Shadow". The New York Times. Penguin Random House. Retrieved November 18, Unsigned review of Hawkes Harbor. Royalties from The Outsiders helped to finance Hinton's education at the University of Tulsa where she studied education and where she met her husband, David Inhofe.

But for several years Hinton suffered from writer's block so severe that, as she told Carol Wallace in Daily News, she "couldn't even write a letter. I taught myself to type in the sixth grade, and I couldn't even type or use my typewriter to write a letter. Things were pretty bad because I also went to college and started reading good writers and I thought, 'Oh, no.

I magnified all its faults. Finally, after she decided that teaching was not for her, and with encouragement from Inhofe, Hinton sat down to write a second novel. Once again Hinton sets her action in the same Tulsa-like surroundings, and focuses on an orphan, Mark, who has lived with the narrator, Bryon, and Bryon's mother since his own parents killed each other in a fight.

It is now over a year since the ending of The Outsiders, and the old gang and social rivalries are not as clear-cut as they once were. The days of hippies are at hand; drugs are part of the teen landscape. There is gang violence aplenty, teens on the prowl and on their own—Ponyboy Curtis even makes an appearance. Overall the book is more disciplined than Hinton's first title, but as Daly and other critics pointed out, "it lacks something.

Other reviewers, however, found Hinton's second novel a moving and heartfelt cry from yet another teenager in pain. Whatever its faults, her book will be hard to forget. Andrews found that this "disturbing" and "sometimes ugly" book "will speak directly to a large number of teen-agers and does have a place in the understanding of today's cultural problems.

Hinton's narrator, Rusty-James, is another classic sensitive outsider type, who begins his narrative with the blunt declaration: "I was hanging out at Benny's, playing pool, when I heard Biff Wilcox was looking to kill me. And like Hinton's other novels, Rumble Fish takes place in compressed time, focusing on incidents which change the life of the narrator forever.

James Guide to Young Adult Writers, the novel deals with Rusty-James's attempts to make some meaning of life after the passing of the gang conflicts that made his brother such a hero. Now, however, Motorcycle Boy is disenchanted, without hope, and virtually commits suicide, gunned down breaking into a pet store. By the end of the novel Rusty-James is left on his own, having lost his brother, his reputation, and his girl, and is without direction.

Some reviewers, such as Anita Silvey in Horn Book, found the novel unsatisfying and Hinton's further writing potential "unpromising. A Publishers Weekly contributor declared that "Ms. Hinton is a brilliant novelist," and Margery Fisher, writing in Growing Point, commented that "once more is the American urban scene in a book as uncompromising in its view of life as it is disciplined.

It's an emotional, almost a physical response, as opposed to the more rational, intellectual reaction that the other book prompted. And there is a name usually given to this kind of success. It is called art. Hinton herself noted that she had been reading a lot about color symbolism and mythology when writing Rumble Fish, and that such concerns crept into the writing of the novel, especially in the character of Motorcycle Boy, the alienated, colorblind gang member looking for meaning.

Hinton begins with character, as she has often noted in interviews, but in Production Notes for Rumble Fish, the screenplay of which she co-wrote with Francis Ford Coppola , she remarked that the novel "was a hard book to write because Rusty-James is a simple person, yet the Motorcycle Boy is the most complex character I've ever created. And Rusty-James sees him one way, which is not right, and I had to make that clear.

It's about over-identifying with something which you can never understand, which is what Rusty-James is doing. The Motorcycle Boy can't identify with anything. The standard four years passed again before publication of Hinton's fourth title, Tex, which was, according to Daly, "Hinton's most successful effort" to date. Once again the reader is on familiar ground with nearorphan protagonists, and troubled youths.

With Tex, however, Hinton opts for a more sensitive and perhaps less troubled narrator than before. Tex McCormick is, as Hinton noted in Delacorte Press's notes from the author, "perhaps the most childlike character I've ever done, but the one who makes the biggest strides toward maturity. I have to admit he's a favorite child. Another fourteen-year-old lacking parental supervision, Tex has his older brother Mason to look after him while their father is on the rodeo circuit.

A story of relationships, Hinton's fourth title focuses on the two teenagers at a time when Mason has had to sell off the family horses to pay bills, as no money has come from their father. This includes Tex's own horse, Negrito. Straining already strained relations between the brothers, this loss of a favored animal sets the plot in motion.

Tex tries to run off and find the animal. Neither his friend Johnny nor Johnny's sister Jamie the romantic attachment is able to talk Tex out of it, but Mason drags him home in the pickup. Johnny and Tex are forever getting in trouble and things get rougher between Mason and Tex by the time the two brothers are kidnapped by a hitchhiker Mark from That Was Then, This Is Now, who has busted out of jail.

Tex's presence of mind saves them, but gets Mark, the hitchhiker, killed by the police. Notoriety at this brings the father home, but disappointment follows when he fails to track down Negrito as he promised. More trouble—in company with Johnny and then with a former friend of Mason's who now deals drugs—lands Tex in the hospital with a bullet wound.

He learns that his real father was another rodeo rider, gets a visit from Johnny and Jamie, and once recovered and reconciled with Mason, convinces his older brother that he should go on to college as he's wanted to. Tex tells him he's lined up a job working with horses and can take care of himself. Kaye felt that Hinton's "raw energy.

Hinton's re-created reality was strong enough to lure Hollywood. Disney productions bought the rights to Tex, filming a faithful adaptation of the novel with young Matt Dillon in the lead role, and introducing actors Meg Tilly and Emilio Estevez. Shot in Tulsa, the movie production used Hinton as an advisor, introducing Dillon to her own horse, Toyota, which played the role of Negrito, and teaching the young actor how to ride.

It was the beginning of a long and continuing friendship between Hinton and Dillon, who played in three of the four adaptations of her novels. The movie also started a trend of introducing young actors on their way up in her movies. Coppola also filmed Rumble Fish, shooting it in black and white to resonate with Motorcycle Boy's color blindness.

Biography on s.e. hinton

The script was co-written by Hinton and Coppola. In both the Coppola adaptations, Hinton played bit parts as well as worked closely as an advisor during production. However, with the fourth movie adaptation, from a screenplay by Estevez and starring him, Hinton remained on the sidelines. Thus, within a few short years—from to —all of Hinton's novels were turned into movies and her popularity was at an all-time high, with movie sales driving up book sales.

Hinton had the added plus in that her experience with movies was a very positive one. But that didn't happen at all. They invited me in right from the start, and I helped with the screenplays. Throughout the early s, then, Hinton was busy with movie adaptations and with her son, born in It was not until that she brought out another novel, Taming the Star Runner.

Edwards Award, for career achievement in YA literature. It had been nine years since publication of Tex; it was thus fitting that she would have a new title out after receiving such an award. Those first four books had a rough sort of unity to them: a portrayal of the difficult process of sorting through problems of alienation and belonging, with a kind of synthesis if not solution presented by the ending of Tex.

Taming the Star Runner, while dealing with some of the old themes, sets off in new directions. Hinton moves from first-to third-person narration in the story of fifteen-year-old Travis Harris who is sent off to his uncle's Oklahoma ranch in lieu of juvenile hall. He has nearly killed his stepfather with a fireplace poker, an attack not unprovoked by the abusive stepfather.

What follows is the classic city boy-come-to-the-country motif. Unwillingly, Travis learns hard lessons on the ranch, but the change from urban to rural is not a Technicolor idyll. Travis arrives in the middle of his uncle's divorce, and the man is distant from him. He takes to hanging out at a barn on the property which is rented to Casey Kincaid, three years older than Travis and a horse trainer.

She is in the process of taming the eponymous stallion, Star Runner. It is the relationship that grows between this unlikely pair that forms the heart of the book. Another major element—a tip of the hat to Hinton's own history—is the acceptance by a New York publisher of a book that young Travis has written. But there are no easy solutions: the stepfather refuses to give permission for publication, as he comes off less than noble in the pages of the manuscript.

Finally Travis's mother stands up to the stepfather and signs permission for him. He has grown closer to Casey, as well as his uncle, but there are no completely happy endings for Hinton, either. Star Runner is killed in an electrical storm and Travis and his uncle are forced to move off the ranch to town, but he is now a published author and has made a real friend in Casey.

Reviews of the novel were largely positive. Nancy Vasilakis commented in Horn Book that it "has been generally agreed that no one can speak to the adolescent psyche the way S. Hinton can," and now with her fifth novel, Vasilakis felt that the author "hasn't lost her touch. The pattern is familiar, but her genius lies in that she has been able to give each of the five protagonists she has drawn from this mythic model a unique voice and a unique story.

Hinton continues to grow in strength as a young adult novelist. Hinton, called this fifth novel "Hinton's most mature and accomplished work. Since publication of Taming the Star Runner, Hinton's work has traveled light miles away from her cast of outsiders and bad boys. The year saw publication of two Hinton titles, both for younger readers.