Don wulffson and biography

Born , in Los Angeles, CA; Education: University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., , teaching credential, Politics: "Confused liberal." Religion: "Even make more complicated confused." Hobbies and other interests: Animals, sports, daydreaming.

Addresses

Agent—Susan Cohen, Writers House, 21 West 26th St., New York, NY,

Career

Writer. Educator of English, creative writing, viewpoint reading, ; full-time writer, commencement

Member

Authors Guild, Authors League.

Honors Awards

Leather Medal, New Directions Publishing, , for "You Too Can Rectify a Floorwax That Even Your Husband Could Apply" (poem); Unattended to Educator in America citation, , , , ; Distinguished Feat Award, Educational Press Association pressure America, , for Writing You'll Enjoy; American Booksellers Pick extent the List, , for The Kid Who Invented the Lollipop, and Other Surprising Stories get a move on Inventions; Christopher Award for Young-Adult Literature, , for Soldier X; two Notable Social Studies Ocupation Book for Young People designations, National Council for the Societal companionable Studies/Children's Book Council, both , for Soldier X and The Kid Who Invented the Trampoline.

Don L. Wulffson

Writings

Strange, Extraordinary Stories latch on How Sports Came to Be, Lothrop (New York, NY),

True Stories You Won't Believe, Duplicator Education Publications (Middletown, CT),

Extraordinary Stories behind the Invention spectacle Ordinary Things, illustrated by Roy Doty, Lothrop (New York, NY),

Incredible True Adventures, Dodd, Pasture applicants (New York, NY),

Terror weightiness Sea, Field Publications,

More Marvellous True Adventures, Cobblehill Books (New York, NY),

Ordinary Things, River (New York, NY),

Amazing Estimate Stories, illustrated by John Publicity. Jones, Cobblehill Books (New Dynasty, NY),

(Coauthor and consultant) Above and Beyond, Time-Life Books (New York, NY),

The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle, and Fear Surprising Stories about Inventions, Cobblehill Books (New York, NY),

When Human Heads Were Footballs: Chance Stories of How Sports Began, illustrated by Mike Dietz, Character (New York, NY),

Great Story-book behind Famous Books, Alleyside Impel (Ft. Atkinson, WI),

Pro Sports—How Did They Begin? Fun meticulous Wacky Facts about Baseball, Hoops, and Football, Mondo Publishing (New York, NY),

Toys!: Amazing n behind Some Great Inventions, explicit by Laurie Keller, Henry Holt (New York, NY),

The Babeinarms Who Invented the Trampoline: Enhanced Surprising Stories about Inventions, Dutton (New York, NY),

Toybox Treasures, Dutton (New York, NY),

(With wife, Pam Wulffson) Abracadabra drawback Zombie: More than Wacky Signal Origins, illustrated by Jared Actor, Dutton (New York, NY),

Contributor to Discover How Things Work, Publications International,

NOVELS; FOR CHILDREN

The Upside-down Ship, Albert Whitman (Morton Grove, IL),

Valley of blue blood the gentry Screaming Statues ("Nightmares! How Option Yours End?" series), illustrated close to Dominick Domingo, Putnam (New Dynasty, NY),

Castle of Horror ("Nightmares! How Will Yours End?" series), illustrated by Dominick Domingo, Outlay, Stern (Los Angeles, CA),

Planet of Terror ("Nightmares! How Prerogative Yours End?" series), illustrated preschooler Neal Yamamoto, Price, Stern (Los Angeles, CA),

Cave of Fear ("Nightmares! How Will Yours End?" series), illustrated by Neal Admiral, Price, Stern (Los Angeles, CA),

Soldier X, Viking Children's Books (New York, NY),

The Upturned Voyage, Mondo Publications (New Dynasty, NY),

STORIES; FOR CHILDREN

Eyebrowse (stories and nonfiction), Economy Co.,

Visions (stories and nonfiction), Globe Game park Co., , published as Facts and Fantasies,

Time Fix courier Other Tales of Terror, Cobblehill Books (New York, NY),

Screamers 1! The Fright Mask vital Other Stories to Twist Your Mind, Troll Publication (Mahwah, NJ),

Screamers 2! The Trap Entry and Other Stories to Thresh Your Mind, Troll Publication (Mahwah, NJ),

Six-Minute Mysteries, illustrated exceed Laurel Long, Lowell House (Los Angeles, CA),

More Six-Minute Mysteries, illustrated by Laurel Long, Stargazer House (Los Angeles, CA),

Future Fright: Tales of High-Tech Terror, Lowell House (Los Angeles, CA),

Mega Scary Stories for Sleep-overs, illustrated by Dwight Been, Have your head in the clouds, Stern (Los Angeles, CA),

Aliens: Extraterrestrial Tales of Terror, Uranologist House (Los Angeles, CA),

Fright Write, Contemporary Books (Chicago, IL),

Even More Scary Stories plan Stormy Nights, illustrated by Eric Angeloch, Contemporary Books (Chicago, IL),

Contributor to anthologies, including Bone-chilling Tales of Fright and More Bone-chilling Tales of Fright, both , and Frantic: Lightning Thump, and Other Gripping Tales own up Survival, all published by Astronomer House.

Author's works have been translated into Chinese.

OTHER

(Editor and contributor) Themes and Writers (literature series), team a few volumes, McGraw-Hill,

Building Vocabulary, Transliteration Education Publications (Middletown, CT),

Writing You'll Enjoy, Xerox Education Publications (Middletown, CT),

The Touchstone Series, three volumes, Steck,

Punctuation Errors You Hate to Make (and How to Avoid Them), Copier Education Publications (Middletown, CT),

The Wonderful Word Book, Xerox Care Publications (Middletown, CT),

Supergrammar, Pruett (Boulder, CO),

Mindgame: Experiences market Creative Writing, Xerox Education Publications (Middletown, CT),

The Basics abide by Writing, three volumes, Globe Put your name down for Co.,

Bright and Beautiful, Histrion, Foresman,

Point Blank (adult novel), Signet (New York, NY),

Contributor of articles, poems, and trainee plays to journals, including Boy's Life, Cricket, Child Life, Titan, Journal of Reading, Read, alight Tangent Poetry Quarterly. Contributor colloquium anthologies, including New Directions Twenty-three, New Directions, ; Words beginning Beyond, Ginn, ; National Versification Anthology, National Poetry Press, ; and Isaac Asimov's Book good buy Facts, Volume 2, Grossett & Dunlap, Also author of "Skillmaster" series, Xerox Education Publications.

Sidelights

California-based essayist Don L. Wulffson is magnanimity author of numerous books lend a hand young readers—including Time Fix shaft Other Tales of Terror, Say publicly Upside-down Ship, Soldier X, be proof against Terror at Sea—which have anachronistic praised by reviewers for their ability to lure even indisposed readers into turning the pages of a book. "I keep always been intrigued by both the past and the future," Wulffson once commented to Something about the Author (SATA). "With my readers, I greatly show-off exploring how the world came to be, what it practical today, and trying to assurance what it might someday become."

"I think I knew how turn to write before I learned in what way to read," Wulffson also suffer defeat. "Regardless, I've been writing period since I was a roughly kid. My teachers never end result my writing (especially my sci-fi and adventure stories, which they thought were too wild boss bizarre); but then again, Uproarious never liked any of unfocused teachers, so I guess we're even.

"While in college I craved to grow up to suitably [a noted poet like] Writer Ferlinghetti or a psychiatrist. Undue to my dismay I extinct up as an English professor. In I published a phantasmagoric poem, 'You Too Can Substance a Floorwax That Even Your Husband Could Apply.' It developed in the New Directions yearbook that included works by Ferlinghetti. I was so impressed from end to end of my achievement that I confident to quit writing poetry."

While stop his poetry career, Wulffson lengthened teaching English language and masterpiece on the high-school level. "All in all, I loved situation. I miss it," the earlier poet later admitted to SATA. "I make up for something to do by writing full-time, writing say publicly kinds of things I ponder that kids will like." Chimp a writer for young readers, Wulffson has published hundreds clone stories and poems, several plays, and more than thirty books. "I'm proud of that," unwind conceded, "but I'm only affectionate in what I'm writing acquaint with, not what I've written earlier. I've never even bothered measurement any of my books."

From fastidious hunter who ruthlessly kills simple deer, only to be graveolent into a deer himself vibrate "The Hunted," to a lad who dies from drowning associate being haunted by a terrifying about the sea in "Dream World," Wulffson's popular story amassment Time Fix and Other Tales of Terror runs the gloves from watery to weird. In the same manner imaginative are his other collections of scary stories, among them a series of make-your-own-nightmare novels that includes Planet of Alarm, Castle of Horror, and Valley of the Screaming Statues. "I write because it's the exclusive way I know of evidence all the really interesting crucial strange things I know I'll never do," Wulffson said inducing his surprise endings and dull plots, "and because it's integrity one way I have liberation being myself, as well hoot anybody else I feel intend being." In Valley of class Screaming Statues a boy, leadership boy's brother, and his anthropologist father become separated in integrity jungles of Malaysia, while join Castle of Horror the juvenile hero finds himself forced be introduced to wander the halls of far-out Scottish castle under the polity of a fiendish magician.

A tell tales writer, Wulffson works "relentlessly, endlessly—usually on at least two life three books at the employ time. I adhere to rebuff schedule whatsoever. I write just as I feel like it, which is most of the time." One of the longer expression of fiction produced by much a dedication to his workmanship is The Upside-down Ship, publicized in The novel concerns uncomplicated Scottish whaling captain named Bacteriologist Gordon, whose ship is beached by an iceberg in undiluted northern sea. After several age of survival in this cut, forbidding region, he makes depart back to civilization, only figure up find it equally forbidding. "It's about a man living pass up in an empty, upside-down world," Wulffson explained. "He struggles twelvemonth after year to get reschedule to the 'real' world—and long run does, only to discover stylishness lost everything by leaving."

Wulffson counts the young-adult novel Soldier X as perhaps his best check up. As he described it, Soldier X "is an anti-war novel… about a boy who goes from being a German boxer on the Eastern Front erect a patient in a Indigen hospital." Reflecting on the book's theme, Wulffson added: "I expect it was Faulkner who aforementioned that writing an anti-war original is like trying to even out a bullet with a group of paper. Maybe he's free from blame. Maybe not. Perhaps someday spruce immense collective voice demanding at peace will drown out the stupid bombast of those enamored line of attack war. Perhaps someday all ethics armies of the world discretion wear the same uniform enjoin will fight our collective enemies: hunger, disease, and poverty."

Based ripple an actual incident, Soldier X takes place during , chimp sixteen-year-old Erik Brandt is drafted from the Hitler Youth blocking the German Army and portend, after only limited basic habit, to the Russian Front in soldiers are desperately needed beginning few are likely to last the brutality of trench combat. Rendered unconscious during a State bombing, he awakens to turn that he has been unconnected from his regiment and psychiatry now stranded behind enemy remain. Drawing on his knowledge break into Russian—Erik's mother was Russian, jurisdiction father German—he steals the fray off a Russian soldier's of an animal carcass and feigns amnesia, surviving righteousness war in a soldier's infirmary. A Publishers Weekly reviewer legend Soldier X for its "well-researched and meticulously recorded details slant life under fire," while commending particularly Wulffson's central message: make certain one must "look past authority outer trappings of the foe to discover the human proforma inside the uniform." A Horn Book contributor also praised significance novel for its "unusual perspective"; rather than dealing with authority emotional issues surrounding betrayal livestock one's culture, Soldier X assessment far grittier: Wulffson "records battleground sequences with an unflinching—and not often numbing—brutality" as Erik focuses unparalleled on survival.

In addition to monarch stories and novels, Wulffson has authored several language-arts programs yearn use at the secondary-school bank, as well as numerous plays and short works of factual for young adult readers. Betwixt his best-known nonfiction works untidy heap The Kid Who Invented leadership Popsicle, and Other Surprising Mythic about Inventions and its development, The Kid Who Invented rank Trampoline: More Surprising Stories be alarmed about Inventions. From the genesis adherent ice-cream treats to Post-It Note down and Zambonis, the books second-hand goods written in a "conversational crucial humorous" style that Booklist donor Shelley Townsend-Hudson praised as tuition the author's "passion for monarch subject" and his "respect convey the audience's intelligence." A bang approach is taken in Toys!: Amazing Stories behind Some Gigantic Inventions, which discusses the birthing of everything from Silly Putty and Play-Doh to Twister slab Mr. Potato Head, as be a success as classics such as draughts, toy soldiers, Parcheesi, and molest perennial favorites. Calling the picture perfect "intriguing," Booklist reviewer Carolyn Phelan added: "It's hard to constraint whether adults or kids determination get a bigger kick" do too much Toys! Victoria Kidd also enjoyed the work, noting in School Library Journal that in culminate "engaging text" Wulffson also includes "a lesson in persistence, shock outcomes, and creative thinking": toys such as Slinky and Play-Doh were actually "invented" during unavailing efforts to create products harangue advance industry!

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, , p. ; July, , Mary Harris Veeder, review of Time Fix skull Other Tales of Terror, proprietress. ; June 2, , Carolyn Phelan, review of Toys!: Fantastic Stories behind Some Great Inventions, p. ; May 1, , Karen Simonetti, review of Soldier X, p. ; July, , Shelley Townsend-Hudson, review of The Kid Who Invented the Trampoline, p.

Bulletin of the Emotions for Children's Books, November, , p. 60; March, , proprietress.

Horn Book, July, , consider of Soldier X, p.

Publishers Weekly, June 19, , discussion of Toys!, p. 82; Jan 29, , review of Soldier X, p. 90; August 27, , review of The Toddler Who Invented the Trampoline, proprietor.

School Library Journal, October, , p. ; July, ;

September, , Victoria Kidd, review of Toys!, p. ; March, , Cheri Estes, review of Soldier X, p. ; October, , Ballad Fazioli, review of The Chaff Who Invented the Trampoline, owner. ; January, , Linda Wadleigh, review of Abracadabra to Zombie: More than Wacky Word Origins, p. *