Wendelin Van Draanen

Wendelin Van Draanen (born January 6, 1965) is an American writer of children's and young-adult fiction.

Biography

Van Draanen was born in Chicago, Illinois. One of her very early influences was Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. According to the author, the book was "about the magic of growing up and [it] reminded me of all the wonderful mischief my brothers and I got into when we were young." Bradbury's work inspired Van Draanen to write How I Survived Being a Girl, which was published by HarperCollins in 1997.[1] Other early influences include Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown. In college, the Van Draanen family business was burned down, leading to financial hardship. Wendelin turned to writing to alleviate stress and she published her first book in 1997, titled How I Survived Being a Girl.[2]

Van Draanen is the daughter of two chemists who immigrated from the Netherlands. Before she became a full-time writer she was a high school math teacher and computer science teacher.[3]

Van Draanen lives in San Luis Obispo, California with her husband Mark Parsons and two sons, Colton and Connor.[3]

Selected works

Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief, which inaugurated the Sammy Keyes series in 1998, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America in 1999.[4]

Runaway, a companion book to the Sammy Keyes series, is about a girl named Holly who tries to escape from her latest foster home.

In 2004 and 2005 Van Draanen wrote Shredderman, a four-book series for younger readers about a fifth grade boy who assumes a secret identity to help him win the battle for truth and justice.

She also wrote the standalone teen romance Flipped in a he-said she-said style, with the two protagonists alternately presenting their perspective on a shared set of events. The two protagonists Bryce and Julianna are neighbors. The book was made into a Warner Brothers feature film directed by Rob Reiner in 2010.

WorldCat participating libraries report works by and about Wendelin Van Draanen that encompass roughly 70+ works in 370+ publications in 12 languages and 51,000+ library holdings.[5]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Shredderman series

Sammy Keyes series

The series has been published by Knopf imprints of Random House, primarily With 18 books in total. Knopf Books for Young Readers.[4]

The Gecko & Sticky

Non-series

See also

References

  1. ↑ Newman, Patricia (May 2002). "Who Wrote That? Featuring Wendelin Van Draanen". California Kids!. Valley Community Newspapers (Sacramento, CA). Reissued by the writer (patricianewman.com). Retrieved 2011-05-11.
  2. ↑ Kumar, Lisa, ed. (2010). "Van Draanen, Wendelin". Something about the Author. 207. Gale. pp. 167–71. ISBN 9781414442204.
  3. 1 2 "Wendelin Van Draanen". Goodreads (goodreads.com). Retrieved 2014-04-20. Author profile with "some recent posts imported from her feed" (71 from December 30, 2012).
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Edgar Awards throughout time", or "Search the Edgar Award Winners and Nominees" (Edgars Database search form). Mystery Writers of America (The Edgars.com). Retrieved 2011-05-11.
  5. ↑ "Van Draanen, Wendelin". WorldCat Identities.
  6. 1 2 "Lone Star Reading List". Texas Library Association (txla.org). Retrieved 2014-04-20. With "Master List" (MS Excel) for download, comprising annual lists of 20 books from 1990–91 to present.

External links

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