May 15, 1936. Born in Staten Island, New York. Coming from a broken home, Zindel never knew his father very well. "Mother was a girl in her twenties when my father left. She used to have to fight to get the allowance from him and tried to keep us...

Considered a groundbreaking author of young adult literature as well as one of its most controversial contributors, Paul Zindel is well known as the creator of realistic novels that depict the teenage milieu with authenticity, humor, and panache. In...

Critics of adolescent literature generally cite four novels of the late 1960s as helping this subgenre break its ties with its past formulaic romanticism and move dramatically into a much more realistic mode: The Outsiders (1967) by S. E. Hinton, The...

In the following excerpt, Forman comments on the auto-biographical elements and depiction of women in Zindel's plays, often comparing the characterizations in his dramas to those in his young adult novels.

In the following excerpt, Raymond examines Zindel's life and literary career and highlights the autobiographical details in Amulets against the Dragon Forces.

Here, in the course of arguing that drama is a form of expression inherent in humankind, Zindel recollects events in his own life that demonstrate an innate affinity for the theater.