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Summary
Summary
When Dan and his family go from middle class to homeless, issues of injustice rise to the forefront in this relatable, timely novel from Todd Strasser.
It seems like Dan has it all. He's a baseball star who hangs with the popular crowd and dates the hottest girl in school. Then his family loses their home.
Forced to move into the town's Tent City, Dan feels his world shifting. His friends try to pretend that everything's cool, but they're not the ones living among the homeless. As Dan struggles to adjust to his new life, he gets involved with the people who are fighting for better conditions and services for the residents of Tent City. But someone wants Tent City gone, and will stop at nothing until it's destroyed...
Author Notes
Todd Strasser was born in New York City. While still a child, Strasser and his parents moved to Roslyn Heights, New York on Long Island. Strasser attended the I.U. Willets Elementary school and then the Wheatley School for junior high and high school. Strasser went to college at New York University for a few years, before dropping out. He lived on a commune, and then in Europe, where he was a street musician.
While he was in Europe, Strasser wrote songs and poems in letters to his friends. He decided to try writing. Upon his return to the United States, Strasser enrolled at Beloit College where he studied literature and writing.
After graduating, Strasser worked at the Middletown Times Herald-Record newspaper in Middletown, New York, and later at Compton Advertising in New York City. In 1978, he sold his first novel, Angel Dust Blues. Strasser used the money to start the Dr. Wing Tip Shoo fortune cookie company. For the next 12 years, Todd sold more fortune cookies than books.
n 1990, Strasser moved to Westchester County, N.Y., where during the next few years, he wrote various movie novelizations, including Home Alone, Free Willy, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Jumanji. In 1993 he wrote Help! I'm Trapped in My Teacher's Body and since then has written 16 more Help! I'm Trapped... books, as well as several other series. All together, he has published more than 100 books. Strasser is alos a speaker at schools and conferences when he is not busy writing
Strasser has won numerous awards in the course of his career, including the 1995 New York State Library Association Award for Outstanding Children's Literature for the Help! I'm Trapped Series, several State Literature Awards, the 1996 International Reading Association Children's Choice as well as the 1996 Children's Book Council Children's Choice for Give a Boy a Gun and the 1996 American Library Association Best Book for Teens. He won the 1997 American Library Association Notable Book for Abe Lincoln for Class President, the 1988 American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, and was a 1988 Edgar Allan Poe nominee from the Mystery Writers of America.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-10-High school senior Dan Halprin is the star pitcher on the baseball team, has been offered a scholarship to Rice University, and is dating wealthy Talia. When his parents lose their jobs as a stockbroker and youth athletics coach, and then their home, the family is forced to move into Dignityville, a tent community in the center of town. Humiliated and angry, Dan struggles to maintain his self-confidence, relationships, and aspirations. When townspeople complain about providing land and services for the homeless, Dignityville becomes a target for threats and violence. Just as Dan begins to understand the attitudes and dreams of other Dignityville residents, he learns that his despondent father has been coerced by Talia's father, a local real-estate magnate, into helping destroy the tent community. In the end, forgiveness, an upturn in work opportunities, and the generosity of neighbors help the Halprins get back on their feet. This compelling social commentary challenges stereotypes about homeless people and offers a look at homelessness from the perspective of a middle-class teen. Diverse characters, easy dialogue, realistic school and community settings, believable tension, and references to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath fuel Strasser's well-paced, engaging narrative. Coping with their personal financial catastrophe, wanting to stay in their familiar town, finding work, accepting charity, and maintaining self-respect are issues that weigh heavily on Dan and his parents. Readers will be drawn into this contemporary story.-Gerry Larson, formerly at Durham School of the Arts, NC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Strasser tackles unexpected homelessness among the middle class in this affecting novel about Dan, a high school senior and promising baseball pitcher whose family suffers a slow slide from a comfortable life to being taken in by relatives and eventually coming to reside in their town's tent city. Overcome by embarrassment, anger, and compassion for his fellow homeless citizens, Dan-who is almost too thoughtful and well-behaved (he only once allows anger to overtake him, and stops short of doing actual harm)-sustains credibility as he gives voice to the disbelief and disorientation felt by many in this situation. Strasser (Fallout) endows other characters, including Dan's parents, with multidimensional responses, and elements of romance and suspense keep up the pace. Opposing points of view about economic balance (including a few didactic passages) help readers understand that there are no black-and-white answers to the questions Strasser poses. Clearly meant to inspire discussion about morality in the face of today's social and economic problems, the book also delivers an authentic look at contemporary high-school society. Ages 12-up. Agent: Stephen Barbara, Foundry Literary + Media. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Dan may have a popular, hot girlfriend and the promise of a baseball scholarship, but his parents have lost their jobs. His family eventually relocates to a controversial homeless tent camp known as Dignityville. Dan's circumstances and his worldviews slowly change in this well-paced problem novel full of current social commentary and with a gripping climax. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Dan is middle-class and college-bound, but that won't keep the global recession from taking his home. Danwith a stockbroker mother and a city-employee father, headed to Rice on a baseball scholarshipwas once a solid member of the middle class. But when his parents lose their jobs, the family winds up in Dignityville, a tent city for the town's homeless. Homelessness, he learns, isn't merely the absence of a roof and four walls: It's hunger, insecure storage, shame, exhaustion, physical vulnerability, and disconnection from phone service and Wi-Fi. Even geography becomes Dan's enemy, as he discovers Dignityville is outside his school district, and his after-school job is too far away to reach. Highly politicized infodumps about America's growing wealth disparity, while unsubtle, are smoothly integrated through the voices of minor characters with messages to impart. There's an Occupy-style activist with informative posters, a young black man sneering at the surprise of middle-class white people at being "shoved down to the bottom where they never thought they'd be," even Dan's own Web searches for a school research project springing from his experiences. For similar themes with less of a problem-novel vibe, try Sarah Dooley's lovely Body of Water (2011); nonetheless, Dan's experience with middle-class poverty is accessible and timely. (Fiction. 13-15)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Stalwart scribe Strasser returns with this strong contemporary effort, a low-key slow-burner about a topic alarmingly underrepresented in modern YA: poverty. Dan, 18, is a promising pitcher with hopes of being drafted early into the big leagues, but the ongoing financial woes of his family suddenly begin to snowball. They lose their home, their car, and their unemployment checks and must move to Dignityville, a shantytown erected near town hall to provide the homeless with a safe place to live. If it weren't bad enough seeing his dad diving through trash, Dan's situation rots away at his social life as well. His friends behave awkwardly, his girlfriend is embarrassed, and Dan is too tired to do the kind of practice his sport requires. There is a mystery someone is plotting against Dignityville to turn public opinion against it and plenty of convincing parallels to The Grapes of Wrath. Behind it all, however, is a simple, sensitive, realistic portrayal of a teen breakup, which more than makes up for occasional purposeful passages. Timely and important material.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist