Todd Strasser (born May 5, 1950 in New York, New York) is an American author of more than 120 young-adult and middle grade novels and novelizations, the latter written under the pen name Morton Rhue.
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Biography
After studying literature in college, Strasser earned his living partly as a street musician in Europe. Later he worked as a journalist and writer for advertising and television. For twelve years he also operated his own fortune cookie company, producing cookies under the "Dr. Wing Tip Shoo" brand name. He is the father of two children, and an avid tennis player and surfer. Strasser has written many award-winning novels for young adults, picking controversial themes like Nazism, bullying at schools, homelessness, and teen sexuality. His works include Give A Boy A Gun, Boot Camp, and Asphalt Tribe. His most famous work The Wave, is a novelization of a social experiment that happened in Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California in 1969, and was made into a movie in 1981. This book has been translated into more than a dozen languages and is read in schools around the world. Strasser is also the author of the Time Zone High trilogy, How I Changed My Life, How I Created My Perfect Prom Date, and How I Spent My Last Night on Earth. How I Created My Perfect Prom Date was adapted for the feature film Drive Me Crazy starring Adrian Grenier and Melissa Joan Hart. Other novels for young adults include The Accident, which became the television movie Over the Limit, as well as Angel Dust Blues, Friends Till The End, and A Very Touchy Subject. The latter also became a television movie, entitled Can A Guy Say No? Strasser has also written a number of young adult series, including Impact Zone (about surfing), Drift X (about drift car competitions), and Here Comes Heavenly (about a punk nanny with magical powers). His books for middle-graders include CON-fidence, The Diving Bell, and Abe Lincoln for Class President. His series for middle graders include the very popular 17-book Help! I'm Trapped... collection, as well as the Don't Get Caught, Against the Odds, and Camp Run-A-Muck books. Strasser has also published articles and short stories in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times.
Can't Get There From Here
Can't Get There From Here is about a group of street children in New York. The children have to struggle to get enough food, to find a place to sleep, not to freeze, in short: to survive. Many young adult readers of the book were impressed after the lecture. They stressed its realistic descriptions. Many young people talk about the harsh reality of urchins which is revealed to them in this book, but is normally an unknown social reality.
Boot Camp
In the book Boot Camp which was published in Germany in 2006, troublesome adults learn to be obedient.
Give a Boy a Gun
The book Give a Boy a Gun was written as a series of interviews from Middletown High School, which was a recent location of a school shooting. Teachers, friends, and students give their versions of their time with Brendan and Gary, the two perpetrators of the shooting, from the beginning of ninth and tenth grades, and the day of the attack. It was recently adapted into a play by Elena M. Garcia.
Works
- The Wave. New York: Dell, 1981; Laurel Leaf/Dell, 1985; Puffin Books 1988, ISBN 0-14-037188-5. Also made into an ABC television show (1981).
- "Young Adult Books: Stalking the Teen." Horn Book Magazine, vol. 62, no. 2 (1986, Mar.-Apr.), pp. 236-239.
- The Accident. New York: Delacorte, 1988. Adapted for television in the ABC Afterschool Special Over the Limit (1990).
- How I Created my Perfect Prom Date. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Originally published as Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date (1996) and later adapted into the film Drive Me Crazy (1999).
- Give a Boy a Gun. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000; Simon Pulse 2002, ISBN 0-689-84893-5
- Thief of Dreams, Putnam Juvenile 2003, ISBN 0-399-23135-8
- Can't Get There from Here, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-689-84169-8
- Slide or Die. Simon Pulse 2006, ISBN 1-4169-0581-2 Drift X Series
- Battle Drift
- Sidewayz Glory
