Paul Zindel

Paul Zindel (May 15, 1936–March 27, 2003) was an American author and playwright. Throughout his teen years he wrote plays, though he trained as a chemist at Wagner College and spent six months working at Allied Chemical after graduating. He later quit and worked as a high school science teacher. In 1965, he wrote The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, his first play that went into production. The play ran off-Broadway in 1970, and on Broadway in 1971. It won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for drama. It was also made into a 1972 movie by 20th Century Fox.

Zindel also wrote numerous novels, all of them aimed at children or young adults, and many of them set in his home town of Staten Island, New York. They tended to be semi-autobiographical, focusing on teenage misfits with abusive or neglectful parents. Paul himself grew up in a single-parent household, his mother working as a nurse. They moved frequently, and his mother often engaged in "get-rich-quick" schemes which didn't pan out. His father walked out on them. Despite the often dark subject matter of his books, which deal with loneliness, loss, and the effects of abuse, they are also filled with humor. Many of his novels have wacky titles, such as My Darling, My Hamburger, or Confessions of A Teenage Baboon. His most popular work is probably The Pigman, first published in 1968. The novel is widely taught in American schools, and also made it on to the list of most frequently banned books in America in the 1990s, because of what some deem offensive language [1].

On March 27, 2003, he died of cancer.

List of Works

Plays

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. 1965.
And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little. 1967.
The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild. 1972.
Every 17 Minutes the Crowd Goes Crazy.
Ladies At The Alamo, 1977
Amulets Against the Dragon Forces. 1998.

Novels

The Pigman. New York: Harper, 1968.
My Darling, My Hamburger. New York: Harper, 1969.
I Never Loved Your Mind. New York: Harper, 1970.
I Love My Mother. (juvenile) New York: Harper, 1975.
Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball! New York: Harper, 1976.
Confessions of a Teenage Baboon. New York: Harper, 1977.
The Undertaker's Gone Bananas. New York: Harper, 1978.
(With wife, Bonnie Zindel) A Star for the Latecomer. New York: Harper, 1980.
The Pigman's Legacy. New York: Harper, 1980.
The Girl Who Wanted a Boy. New York: Harper, 1981.
(With Crescent Dragonwagon) To Take a Dare. New York: Harper, 1982.
Harry and Hortense at Hormone High. New York: Harper, 1985.
The Amazing and Death-Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman. New York: Harper, 1987.
A Begonia for Miss Applebaum. New York: Harper, 1989.
The Pigman and Me. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Attack of the Killer Fishsticks. (juvenile) New York: Bantam, 1993.
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