Todd Strasser

Todd Strasser, a native of New York City and an alum of Wisconsin’s Benoit College, is the author of several popular books for children and young adults, many of which are novelizations of television shows and movies including Jumanji and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Wave is without a doubt his best-known work, but many readers may be surprised to learn that it, too, is actually a novelization of a 1981 ABC television special. The television special was itself inspired by the “Third Wave” teaching experiment that took place at a Palo Alto high school in 1981. Strasser’s novels have also been adapted into films—for example, 1996’s How I Created My Perfect Prom Date was adapted into the popular 1999 teen flick Drive Me Crazy. Strasser’s work has on occasion been regarded as controversial and criticized for being racially insensitive, and his novel American Terrorist—which many pre-publication reviewers saw as Islamophobic—was pulled from publisher Simon & Schuster’s publication lineup in 2016. Strasser lives with his wife in Westchester County, New York.