Susin Nielsen

Tremendous Things

At the start of ninth grade, Wilbur Nuñez-Knopf is hoping for a fresh start. But he just can’t live down a deeply humiliating moment from two years earlier, and it follows him into high school. His good friend Alex has stuck by him, but Alex has started dating Fabrizio and he doesn’t have much time to hang out. Luckily, Wil can confide in his best friend: his elderly neighbor Sal. But he’s lonely, and longs to have a special someone of his own. He spends his spare time writing poems, playing triangle in the school band, working a McJob and walking his ugly but affectionate chihuahua, Templeton.

When the band does an exchange with students from Paris and the French kids arrive in Toronto, a girl named Charlie captures Wilbur’s heart. But his feelings aren’t reciprocated. So Alex, Fabrizio, and Sal join forces to build Wil’s confidence, in the hopes he can impress Charlie when they go to Paris. Maybe, just maybe, Wilbur will find a new defining moment in the City of Love.

A funny and heartfelt story about learning how to rise above your worst moment while staying true to yourself – with the help of old friends, new friends – and a dollop of cheesy poetry.

KIDSBOOKS

CHAPTERS-INDIGO

Awards/Honours

Nominated for the 2022 UK Carnegie Medal

Nominated for the 2022 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award

Nominated for the 2022 IODE Violet Downey Award

Nominated for the 2022 Ontario Library Association’s “Red Maple Award”

Nominated for the 2022 Oklahoma Sequoyah Award

Inspiration Behind Tremendous Things

A number of things were at play when I started to imagine “Tremendous Things.” First, I’d heard a story about an adult who, as a kid, had a really unfortunate, public mishap when he was in junior high, and it followed him straight through high school. He could never shake his embarrassing nickname. That stuck with me, and I started thinking about Wilbur. Second, my agent asked me, kindly, “Have you ever considered writing a book where the parents are together, and happy?” I realized that I had never, not once, done that. Thus I started thinking about Wilbur’s parents, The Mumps. Third, I’ve always wanted to write an unrequited love story because, well, it’s happened to all of us, and fourth, I love Paris, and I love my French publishers and translator, and I really wanted to set part of a book there, partly so I’d have an excuse to travel there and claim it as a business expense!

I also, for the first time ever, set the main action in Toronto instead of Vancouver, which some of my Vancouver readers might find sacrilegious. But I lived in Toronto for 12 years in my youth, and for some reason, it felt like this was the place to set this particular novel.