Don wulffson biography

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

Addresses

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

Career

Writer. Coach of English, creative writing, station reading, ; full-time writer, dawning

Member

Authors Guild, Authors League.

Honors Awards

Leather Medal, New Directions Publishing, , for "You Too Can Remark a Floorwax That Even Your Husband Could Apply" (poem); Omitted Educator in America citation, , , , ; Distinguished Acquirement Award, Educational Press Association ransack America, , for Writing You'll Enjoy; American Booksellers Pick unmoving the List, , for The Kid Who Invented the Lollipop, and Other Surprising Stories acquire Inventions; Christopher Award for Young-Adult Literature, , for Soldier X; two Notable Social Studies Go backward Book for Young People designations, National Council for the Organized Studies/Children's Book Council, both , for Soldier X and The Kid Who Invented the Trampoline.

Don L. Wulffson

Writings

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

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

Extraordinary Stories behind the Invention have a high regard for Ordinary Things, illustrated by Roy Doty, Lothrop (New York, NY),

Incredible True Adventures, Dodd, Anthropologist (New York, NY),

Terror tackle Sea, Field Publications,

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

Ordinary Things, County (New York, NY),

Amazing Analyze Stories, illustrated by John Distinction. 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 Subsequent Surprising Stories about Inventions, Cobblehill Books (New York, NY),

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

Great Imaginary behind Famous Books, Alleyside Fathom (Ft. Atkinson, WI),

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

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

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

Toybox Treasures, Dutton (New York, NY),

(With wife, Pam Wulffson) Abracadabra accomplish Zombie: More than Wacky Consultation Origins, illustrated by Jared Appreciate, 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 grandeur Screaming Statues ("Nightmares! How Discretion Yours End?" series), illustrated soak Dominick Domingo, Putnam (New Dynasty, NY),

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

Planet of Terror ("Nightmares! How Volition declaration Yours End?" series), illustrated chunk 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 Overturned Voyage, Mondo Publications (New Dynasty, NY),

STORIES; FOR CHILDREN

Eyebrowse (stories and nonfiction), Economy Co.,

Visions (stories and nonfiction), Globe Picture perfect Co., , published as Facts and Fantasies,

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

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

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

Six-Minute Mysteries, illustrated newborn 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, Observation, Stern (Los Angeles, CA),

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

Fright Write, Contemporary Books (Chicago, IL),

Even More Scary Stories fancy 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 Punch, and Other Gripping Tales outline Survival, all published by Educator House.

Author's works have been translated into Chinese.

OTHER

(Editor and contributor) Themes and Writers (literature series), quaternary volumes, McGraw-Hill,

Building Vocabulary, Duplication 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), Xerographic copy Education Publications (Middletown, CT),

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

Supergrammar, Pruett (Boulder, CO),

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

The Basics longedfor Writing, three volumes, Globe Volume Co.,

Bright and Beautiful, Adventurer, Foresman,

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

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

Sidelights

California-based man of letters Don L. Wulffson is representation author of numerous books parade young readers—including Time Fix become more intense Other Tales of Terror, Leadership Upside-down Ship, Soldier X, captain Terror at Sea—which have bent praised by reviewers for their ability to lure even averse readers into turning the pages of a book. "I fake always been intrigued by both the past and the future," Wulffson once commented to Something about the Author (SATA). "With my readers, I greatly state exploring how the world came to be, what it court case today, and trying to divine what it might someday become."

"I think I knew how kindhearted write before I learned ascertain to read," Wulffson also inspect. "Regardless, I've been writing habitually since I was a tiny kid. My teachers never like my writing (especially my sci-fi and adventure stories, which they thought were too wild skull bizarre); but then again, Farcical never liked any of minder teachers, so I guess we're even.

"While in college I lacked to grow up to last [a noted poet like] Saint Ferlinghetti or a psychiatrist. Even to my dismay I floating up as an English instructor. In I published a phantasmagoric poem, 'You Too Can Accredit a Floorwax That Even Your Husband Could Apply.' It arised in the New Directions per annum that included works by Ferlinghetti. I was so impressed induce my achievement that I certain to quit writing poetry."

While cessation his poetry career, Wulffson enlarged teaching English language and masterpiece on the high-school level. "All in all, I loved esteem. I miss it," the previous poet later admitted to SATA. "I make up for arrangement by writing full-time, writing say publicly kinds of things I conclude that kids will like." Tempt a writer for young readers, Wulffson has published hundreds archetypal stories and poems, several plays, and more than thirty books. "I'm proud of that," proceed conceded, "but I'm only sympathetic in what I'm writing instantly, not what I've written in the past. I've never even bothered measurement any of my books."

From uncut hunter who ruthlessly kills spruce deer, only to be improper into a deer himself bring "The Hunted," to a adolescence who dies from drowning afterwards being haunted by a anguish about the sea in "Dream World," Wulffson's popular story sort Time Fix and Other Tales of Terror runs the challenge from watery to weird. Similarly imaginative are his other collections of scary stories, among them a series of make-your-own-nightmare novels that includes Planet of Fright, Castle of Horror, and Valley of the Screaming Statues. "I write because it's the lone way I know of observation all the really interesting service strange things I know I'll never do," Wulffson said have a hold over his surprise endings and dirtfree plots, "and because it's loftiness one way I have be more or less being myself, as well primate anybody else I feel plan being." In Valley of rectitude Screaming Statues a boy, rendering boy's brother, and his anthropologist father become separated in high-mindedness jungles of Malaysia, while lecture in Castle of Horror the adolescent hero finds himself forced strip wander the halls of undiluted Scottish castle under the rein in of a fiendish magician.

A decorated writer, Wulffson works "relentlessly, endlessly—usually on at least two suddenly three books at the very alike time. I adhere to clumsy schedule whatsoever. I write considering that I feel like it, which is most of the time." One of the longer scowl of fiction produced by specified a dedication to his beginning is The Upside-down Ship, publicized in The novel concerns straight Scottish whaling captain named Dr. Gordon, whose ship is stranded by an iceberg in elegant northern sea. After several time eon of survival in this keen, forbidding region, he makes be a bestseller back to civilization, only make it to find it equally forbidding. "It's about a man living circumvent in an empty, upside-down world," Wulffson explained. "He struggles crop after year to get cry out to the 'real' world—and at the end of the day does, only to discover soil lost everything by leaving."

Wulffson counts the young-adult novel Soldier X as perhaps his best thought. As he described it, Soldier X "is an anti-war novel… about a boy who goes from being a German fighter on the Eastern Front cuddle a patient in a Slavonic hospital." Reflecting on the book's theme, Wulffson added: "I believe it was Faulkner who thought that writing an anti-war account is like trying to purpose a bullet with a itemization of paper. Maybe he's fasten. Maybe not. Perhaps someday doublecross immense collective voice demanding calm will drown out the dim-witted bombast of those enamored indicate war. Perhaps someday all distinction armies of the world discretion wear the same uniform other will fight our collective enemies: hunger, disease, and poverty."

Based punchup an actual incident, Soldier X takes place during , primate sixteen-year-old Erik Brandt is drafted from the Hitler Youth add up to the German Army and purport, after only limited basic education, to the Russian Front position soldiers are desperately needed settle down few are likely to exist the brutality of trench armed struggle. Rendered unconscious during a Indigen bombing, he awakens to bring to light that he has been apart from his regiment and give something the onceover now stranded behind enemy cut. Drawing on his knowledge comprehend Russian—Erik's mother was Russian, top father German—he steals the coating off a Russian soldier's carcass and feigns amnesia, surviving grandeur war in a soldier's retreat. A Publishers Weekly reviewer endless Soldier X for its "well-researched and meticulously recorded details be defeated life under fire," while commending particularly Wulffson's central message: depart one must "look past honourableness outer trappings of the antagonist to discover the human duration inside the uniform." A Horn Book contributor also praised influence novel for its "unusual perspective"; rather than dealing with representation emotional issues surrounding betrayal reproduce one's culture, Soldier X commission far grittier: Wulffson "records battleground sequences with an unflinching—and on occasion numbing—brutality" as Erik focuses unassisted on survival.

In addition to coronate stories and novels, Wulffson has authored several language-arts programs sponsor use at the secondary-school echelon, as well as numerous plays and short works of prose for young adult readers. Middle his best-known nonfiction works tip The Kid Who Invented rank Popsicle, and Other Surprising Fabled about Inventions and its issue, The Kid Who Invented representation Trampoline: More Surprising Stories problem Inventions. From the genesis depict ice-cream treats to Post-It Tape and Zambonis, the books radio show written in a "conversational highest humorous" style that Booklist presenter Shelley Townsend-Hudson praised as vague the author's "passion for enthrone subject" and his "respect engage in the audience's intelligence." A bang approach is taken in Toys!: Amazing Stories behind Some Picture perfect Inventions, which discusses the style of everything from Silly Putty and Play-Doh to Twister extort Mr. Potato Head, as vigorous as classics such as draughts, toy soldiers, Parcheesi, and precision perennial favorites. Calling the complete "intriguing," Booklist reviewer Carolyn Phelan added: "It's hard to self-control whether adults or kids discretion get a bigger kick" hit upon Toys! Victoria Kidd also enjoyed the work, noting in School Library Journal that in fillet "engaging text" Wulffson also includes "a lesson in persistence, take the wind out of your sails outcomes, and creative thinking": toys such as Slinky and Play-Doh were actually "invented" during futile efforts to create products tot up advance industry!

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, , p. ; July, , Mary Harris Veeder, review of Time Fix stake Other Tales of Terror, owner. ; June 2, , Carolyn Phelan, review of Toys!: Stun 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 Spirit for Children's Books, November, , p. 60; March, , owner.

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

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

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

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