Wendelin Van Draanen 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 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. 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. Van Draanen is the daughter of two chemists who immigrated from the Netherlands. Before she became a full-time writer she was a high schoolmath teacher and computer science teacher. Van Draanen lives in San Luis Obispo, California with her husband Mark Parsons and two sons, Colton and Connor.
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. 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.
Shredderman series
Shredderman 1: Secret Identity
Shredderman 2: Attack of the Tagger
Shredderman 3: Meet the Gecko
Shredderman 4: Enemy Spy
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.
Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief – 1999 Edgar Award, Best Juvenile Mystery
