With ten young-adult books published in six years, David Lubar is fast becoming a household name for young readers looking for a humorous take on teen troubles. Lubar's stories involve zombies, witches, and bizarre imaginary critters, but also feature maladjusted students, as in Hidden Talents, and pay homage to strange amusements, as with his 2002 novel, Dunk. In addition to his career as a short story writer and novelist, he has also worked as a programmer, working on scores of computer games for GameBoy and the Atari 2600, including Home Alone and Frogger. Lubar also provides a regular humor column for Voice of Youth Advocates. In comparing the life of a computer programmer to that of a writer, Lubar told Peggy Tibbetts in the online journal Writing World, "For what it's worth, books have a longer shelf life. None of my games will be around twenty years from now. I...