Harvard Student’s Book Pulled From Shelves

Posted on Apr 28, 2006

The Ivy League sophomore, who got a $500,000 two-book deal, admitted borrowing material from two other books.

AP:

NEW YORK - A teen novel containing admittedly borrowed material has been pulled from the market. Author Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University sophomore, had acknowledged that numerous passages in “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life” were lifted from another writer.

Publisher Little, Brown and Company, which had signed Viswanathan to a reported six-figure deal, said in a statement Thursday that it had notified retail and wholesale outlets to stop selling copies of the book, and to return unsold copies to the publisher.

Viswanathan, 19, has apologized repeatedly for lifting material from Megan McCafferty, whose books include “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings,” saying she had read McCafferty’s books voraciously in high school and unintentionally mimicked them.

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