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 togethe...

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 addi...

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 Con...

Rats are rodents—that is, members of the order Rodentia (see TAXONOMY). Rodents are further classified into the suborder Simplicidentata (with one pair of incisor teeth), these then being divided into three infraorders: the Sciuromorpha (beavers,...

Writer Robert Sullivan wanted to get to know New York City's most infamous creatures. So like any good naturalist, he studied up on their history and what was known about their behavior and decided to spend a year observing them in their natural habitat....

The year of the rat RATS by Robert Sullivan Cranta, £12, pp. 256, ISBN 1862077614 £11 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 'Ah,' Robert Sullivan exclaims in this artful book, 'the excitement, the nail-biting and palpably semi-wild thrill of ratting in the city!'...

The parent company of KFC and Taco Bell _ still smarting from last year's E. coli scare _ has been forced back into damage-control mode after television cameras caught rats scampering around a restaurant floor.As health inspectors descended on a KFC and Taco Bell eatery...

Researchers seeking new treatments for heart disease managed to grow a rat heart in the lab and start it beating."While it still sounds like science fiction, we've hopefully opened a new door in the notion that we can build these tissues and one day provide...