Dawn Malone

Dawn Malone writes fiction for middle-grade readers and has a professional background in newspaper reporting. Bingo Summer follows thirteen-year-old Summer Haas after a winning lottery ticket abruptly changes her family's circumstances. Their move from a small Illinois town to a Chicago suburb gives Summer new clothes and opportunities, but also makes friendship and self-presentation more complicated. The novel focuses on her effort to fit into a new school without concealing the person she was before the money arrived. Published in 2014, it uses an improbable windfall to explore recognizable pressures involving status, loyalty, embarrassment, and belonging. Malone has said that Summer's difficult start at a new school drew partly from her own teenage experience. Her work has appeared in children's magazines including Highlights and Pockets, and she later wrote another middle-grade novel, The Upside of Down. She also publishes gentle contemporary romance as D. E. Malone, keeping that work distinct from the school-age audience and perspective of her Dawn Malone books.