Biography
Morton Rhue is the pen name of the American writer Todd Strasser, who was born in New York City in 1950; by his own account the name plays on the French words 'mort' and 'rue' as renderings of Todd and Strasser. After dropping out of his first studies in New York and spending time as a street musician in Europe, he completed a degree in literature at Beloit College in Wisconsin in 1974 and then worked as a newspaper reporter and advertising copywriter; his short stories appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire and The New York Times, among others. In 1981, as Morton Rhue, he published The Wave, the novelization of a television film about teacher Ron Jones's classroom experiment, which as Die Welle became widely read in schools in the German-speaking countries. Altogether he has written more than 140 books for young adults and children, taking up themes such as Nazism, school violence and homelessness, for example in Give a Boy a Gun, Boot Camp and Can't Get There from Here. In 1988 he received the German Preis der Leseratten.
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