SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Beasties
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://peterlerangis.com/
CITY: New York
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 352
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born August 19, 1955, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Nicholas P. (a telephone company employee) and Mary (a school secretary) Lerangis; married Cristina L. deVaron (a musician and songwriter), September 4, 1983; children: Nicholas James, Joseph Alexander.
EDUCATION:Harvard College, A.B., 1977.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and performer. Actor and vocalist in New York, NY, 1978-89; freelance copyeditor, 1979-85; freelance writer, 1986—. Teacher of copyediting and proofreading at City University of New York Graduate Center, 1985-86. Family Literacy writer-in-residence, National Book Foundation, 2004; Stony Brook Southampton Children’s Literature Conference, instructor, 2014. Presenter to schools and libraries; conductor of writing workshops for Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and Highlights Foundation. Keynote speaker for SCBWI national conference, 2013. Member, Harvard Krokodiloes board.
AVOCATIONS:Photography, running, singing, piano.
MEMBER:Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, PEN, Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
AWARDS:Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers designation, American Library Association (ALA), 1998, for Last Stop; Children’s Choice designation, Children’s Book Council/International Reading Association (CBC/IRA), 2000, for books in “Watchers” series; selected by First Lady Laura Bush to represent the United States at the first Russian book festival, 2003; Books for the Teen Age designation, New York Public Library, and Best Children’s Books selection, Bank Street College of Education, both 2006, both for Smiler’s Bones; IRA Teachers’ Choices selection, ALA Schneider Family Book Award, and ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults designation, all 2013, all for Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am.
WRITINGS
Also author of workd in the “Sweet Valley Twins” and “Sweet Valley High” series under the house pseudonym Francine Pascal. Author of works in the “Baby-Sitters Club” series under the house pseudonym Ann M. Martin. Short fiction represented in anthologies, including Unexpected: 11 Mysterious Stories, edited by Laura E. Williams, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2005; Bites, edited by Lois Metzger, Scholastic, 2009; and 39 Clues: Vesper’s Rising, Scholastic, 2011.
Colossus Rises was adapted for audiobook, HarperAudio. 2013. Lost in Babylon was adapted for audiobook, read by Johnathan McClain, HarperAudio, 2013. The Tomb of Shadows was adapted for audiobook, read by McClain, HarperAudio, 2014. The Curse of the King was adapted for audiobook, read by McClain, HarperAudio, 2015. The Legend of the Rift was adapted for audiobook, read by McClain, HarperAudio, 2016.
SIDELIGHTS
While his books range in audience from children and middle graders to young adults, Peter Lerangis may be best known for his contributions to the popular “39 Clues” series of adventure tales as well as his “Seven Wonders” fantasy series. His award-winning works include Smiler’s Bones, a historical novel, as well as Somebody Please Tell Me Who I Am, a teen novel coauthored with Harry Mazer. Lerangis also produces media tie-ins, among them film novelizations of Walt Disney Studios’ animated classic Beauty and the Beast and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.
A former actor in musical theater, Lerangis began his writing career publishing novels under the well-known house pseudonyms Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene, and he published under his own name only briefly before writing three novels in the “Sweet Valley Twins” and “Sweet Valley High” series published under the name of series founder Francine Pascal. A contract to write dozens of “Baby-Sitters Club” novels followed, these published under the series byline of founder Ann M. Martin. By the mid-1990s, Lerangis was building a following with his teen sci-fi series “Watchers” as well as with his thriller novels The Yearbook and Driver’s Dead and the humorous ‘tween novel It Came from the Cafeteria.
Based on a true story, Smiler’s Bones focuses on the six Inuit—then called Eskimos—encountered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary during his 1897 journey to Greenland. Included among the explorer’s unusual “finds” and brought to New York City to be presented before the American Museum of Natural History, these native Greenlanders served as a living exhibit at the museum, impressing dispassionate scientists and curious spectators alike. Lerangis’s novel is narrated by one of the six, nineteen-year-old Minik, as he recalls the experience eleven years later. Too young to fully understand the demeaning nature of his situation, Minik watched as four of his older companions—including his father Qisuk (known as “Smiler” due to his facial expression) succumbed to tuberculosis and died. Taken in by the family of the museum’s compassionate superintendent, Will Wallace, Minik dreams of returning to Greenland, all the while struggling with the emotional conflicts resulting from both adolescence and cultural displacement.
“Minik is an unforgettable character,” noted School Library Journal contributor Vicki Reutter, the critic adding of Smiler’s Bones that “issues of racism and scientific arrogance will not be lost on readers.” Lerangis “succeeds in making Minik and his plight come to life,” wrote Paula Rohrlick in Kliatt, making Smiler’s Bones “a more sophisticated tale than its brief length might imply.” Dubbing the novel a “wrenching” tale. Booklist critic Jennifer Mattson added that the narrator’s “incisive emotions are unforgettable.” Praising Lerangis’s prose as “vivid” and his descriptions of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Manhattan as “particularly brilliant,” a Kirkus Reviewer concluded that Smiler’s Bones relates a “compelling and important story.”
Drawing comparisons to Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a novel by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, Lerangis’s young-adult novel wtf follows one spectacularly eventful night in the lives of six teenagers from New York City. Needing cash to pay off a debt to Waits, a drug dealer who in turn owes money to a mobster, Byron convinces Jimmy to drive him to the suburbs, where he and friend Cam hope to offload some drugs. Plans change when their car hits a deer and Jimmy and Byron flee the scene on foot, believing Cam to be dead. The teens’ odyssey leads them to fateful encounters with MC and Reina, girls who become caught up in Waits’s scheme. “Written in ever-widening circles and loops,” the “structure [of wtf ] nearly becomes a character in its own right,” observed Voice of Youth Advocates contributor Melissa Moore.
Lerangis’s Somebody Please Tell Me Who I Am was described by Horn Book critic Dean Schneider as “an easy-to-read … novel that respects its readers and challenges them to understand the true consequences of war.” Smart and talented high-school senior Ben shocks everyone by enlisting in the U.S. military instead of attending college. While deployed in Iraq, Ben suffers a traumatic brain injury when an explosive device strikes his convoy. Sent back to the States, he wakes up from a coma with little memory of his past, devastating those closest to him, including fiancé Ariela, autistic brother Chris, and best friend Niko. “Heart-wrenching and emotionally charged, Somebody Please Tell Me Who I Am provides a moving portrait of a young soldier’s sacrifice and struggle,” according to Taryn Bush in the Voice of Youth Advocates.
With The Colossus Rises, Lerangis opened his “Seven Wonders” series. Here readers meet Jack McKinley, a thirteen-year-old who is suffering from a genetic abnormality that will kill him unless he completes a fantastic mission. Descended from the royal family of Atlantis, Jack is kidnapped and taken to the Karai Institute, a secret facility where he undergoes training alongside Marco, Aly, and Cass, teens who have also been recruited to locate the seven magic Loculi, objects containing the powers of the lost civilization. Success in locating the orbs, which are distributed among the proverbial Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, will not only save the teens’ lives; it will also ensure the survival of humankind. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called The Colossus Rises, “a real page-turner,” adding that “there’s a genuine sense of mystery and even a touch of grandeur to this tale.”
In Lost in Babylon the quartet search for a second Loculus hidden in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, their task complicated by the mysterious disappearance of Marco and confrontations with malevolent agents from a clandestine agency known as the Massa. The teens journey to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus to retrieve the Loculus of Healing in The Tomb of Shadows, and further volumes in the series include The Curse of the King, and The Legend of the Rift . “Action keeps the plot hopping, with brief bits of character building that will bond readers” to Jack and his companions, wrote Cindy Welch in her Booklist appraisal of Lost in Babylon, and a Kirkus Reviews writer applauded “the cinematic plotting” in The Tomb of Shadows.
Lerangis kicks off his “Max Tilt” young-adult adventure series with Fire the Depths. Biracial thirteen-year-old Max Tilt, whose father is Dominican, is left in the care of his eighteen-year-old cousin Alexandra when his parents leave town—and in the attic they happen to find a trunk left by their famous ancestor Jules Verne. Clues point toward a hunt for a manuscript claiming that Verne’s science-fiction stories were based on reality, but Max and Alex will have to join forces with stingy businessman Spencer Niemand on his innovative submarine for a life-or-death undersea adventure in order to find it. Puzzles fill the narrative, with Max using his special perspective—he is on the autism spectrum and has synesthesia, mixing up his senses—to help solve them. Fire the Depths is followed by 80 Days or Die and Enter the Core.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that “the fast pace and nifty concepts carry Lerangis’s story, and the ending neatly sets up future installments.” In Booklist, Sarah Bean Thompson took note of the “action-filled plot that moves at a breakneck pace,” with “each chapter ending on a cliff-hanger.” In School Library Journal, MaryAnn Karre declared of Fire the Depths, “Readers will be hooked by the high-octane adventure and charmed by the well-developed characters.”
Lerangis starts a new trilogy with Throwback, about a Greek American teen who discovers that, like his grandfather, he is one of a select few who can travel through time. Deciding to risk making changes to the past, Corey tries his hand at keeping his grandfather’s wife away from the World Trade Center in 2001, but he ends up getting stuck in Manhattan in 1917. Able fellow female time travelers Quinn Roper and Leila help keep Corey on his toes. A Kirkus Reviews called Throwback “a trilogy opener with all the makings of a grand tale … in time.”
“In writing, the possibilities are endless,” Lerangis once remarked to SATA. “If you have a little talent and a lot of passion for it, then the only remaining necessary ingredient is discipline. And that is something anyone can learn, even a horrendous procrastinator like me!”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 1999, review of Last Stop, p. 1316; April 1, 2005, Jennifer Mattson, review of Smiler’s Bones, p. 1354; October 15, 2009, Cindy Dobrez, review of wtf, p. 43; February 15, 2012, Heather Booth, review of Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, p. 56; December 1, 2012, Heather Booth, review of The Colossus Rises, p. 63; December 15, 2013, Cindy Welch, review of Lost in Babylon, p. 49; September 15, 2017, Sarah Bean Thompson, review of Fire the Depths, p. 55.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, February, 2010, Karen Coats, review of wtf, p. 253; March, 2012, Deborah Stevenson, review of Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, p. 362.
Horn Book, May-June, 2012, Dean Schneider, review of Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, p. 93.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005, review of Smiler’s Bones, p. 354; October 15, 2009, review of wtf; December 15, 2012, review of The Colossus Rises; September 15, 2013, review of Lost in Babylon; April 15, 2014, review of The Tomb of Shadows; August 1, 2017, review of Fire the Depths; July 15, 2019, review of Throwback.
Kliatt, May, 2005, Paula Rohlick, review of Smiler’s Bones, p. 15.
Publishers Weekly, November 23, 1998, review of Last Stop, p. 67; January 16, 2012, review of Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, p. 58; December 3, 3012, review of The Colossus Rises, p. 76; September 18, 2017, review of Fire the Depths, p. 71.
School Library Journal, June, 2005, Vicki Reutter, review of Smiler’s Bones, p. 161; April, 2008, Terrilyn Fleming, review of The Big Production, p. 143; August, 2009, Jackie Partch, review of The Sword Thief, p. 108; February, 2010, Terri Clark, review of wtf, p. 114; January, 2012, Georgia Christgau, review of Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, p. 122; March, 2013, Anthony C. Doyle, review of The Colossus Rises, p. 165; February, 2014, Amanda Raklovits, review of Lost in Babylon, p. 54; May, 2014, review of Tomb of Shadows, p. 145; August, 2017, MaryAnn Karre, review of Fire the Depths, p. 88.
Voice of Youth Advocates, August, 1995, review of Driver’s Dead, p. 144; August, 2005, Kimberly Paone, review of Smiler’s Bones, p. 220; December, 2009, Melissa Moore, review of wtf, p. 410; December, 2011, Taryn Bush, review of Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, p. 496.
ONLINE
Peter Lerangis website, http://peterlerangis.com (March 1, 2019).
Seven Wonders website, http://www.sevenwondersbooks.com/ (March 1, 2016), author profile.
ThreeInvestigatorsBooks.com, http://www.threeinvestigatorsbooks.com/ (May 26, 2006), Mark Zahn, author interview.*
Peter Lerangis is the author of more than 175 books, which have sold nearly 7 million copies and been translated into 35 different languages. These include nine New York Times Bestsellers: all five books of The Seven Wonders series (The Colossus Rises, Lost in Babylon, The Tomb of Shadows, The Curse of the King, and The Legend of the Rift); all of his contributions in the The 39 Clues series (The Sword Thief; The Viper’s Nest; and Vespers Rising , which was co-authored with Rick Riordan, Gordon Korman, and Jude Watson); and The Dead of Night, Book 3 in The 39 Clues: Cahills Vs. Vespers series. His novel Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, a collaboration with Harry Mazer, won the 2013 Schneider Award, presented by the American Library Association “for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for adolescent audiences,” and it was selected for the 2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults list. The Sword Thief was Amazon.com’s #5 best-selling children’s book in 2009. In a five-city U.S. book tour in spring 2009, Peter videoblogged his own search for one of the Clues. He is also author of the hilarious, edgy YA novel wtf, and the Drama Club series, about a group of high school theater kids in a town where theater is big-budget and life-changing. His novel Smiler’s Bones, based on the true story of a Polar Eskimo boy orphaned in New York City at the turn of the 20th century, was selected as a N.Y. Public Library Best Books for Teens 2006, a Bank Street Best Books of 2006, and a Junior Library Guild pick. Peter was one of three authors, along with R. L. Stine and Marc Brown, invited by the White House to represent the U. S. in the first Russian Book Festival in 2003. Among his most popular titles are the Spy X and Watchers series, the two-book Antarctica adventure, a series of humorous chapter books (Abracadabra), two young-adult thrillers (The Yearbook and Driver’s Dead), four middle-grade novels (Spring Fever, Spring Break, It Came from the Cafeteria, and Attack of the Killer Potatoes, and many movie novelizations (The Sixth Sense, Sleepy Hollow). He is a Harvard graduate with a degree in biochemistry. After college he became a Broadway musical theater actor. He has run a marathon and gone rock-climbing during an earthquake, but not on the same day. He lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, where they raised their two sons, Nick and Joe. Peter has conducted workshops and given presentations for the National Book Foundation, PEN, the International Literacy Association, BookExpo, the Southampton Writers Conference, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Singapore Writers Festival, the Sharjah International Book Fair (United Arab Emirates), the Bal Sahitya Mahotsav Children’s Book Festival in Nepal, the Texas Book Festival, the Texas Library Association, the Southern California Booksellers Independent Booksellers Association, the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, the Miami Book Fair, the Tucson Book Festival, the Decatur Book Festival, YALLfest, the Plum Creek Literacy Festival, the Morristown Book Festival, and the Highlights Foundation. Over the years he has visited schools in 42 states and 9 foreign countries and become known for his humorous, informative presentations. In his spare time, he likes to eat chocolate. Lots of it. Seriously, he loves chocolate.
Chapter 1. In the Beginning
Peter Lerangis was born in Brooklyn, New York, during Hurricane Diane, the worst tropical cyclone ever to hit the Northeast (rivaled, his parents claim, by his bedroom floor as a boy). Perhaps due to the extremes of air pressure and magnetic forces, Peter showed unusual powers of communication at an early age.
Chapter 2. Misspent Yoot
Peter became My Big Fat Greek-American Baby to a big, close family that ate well and laughed hard — doting uncles and aunts, lots of younger cousins to play with. Each year his dad took him to the Greek Independence Day ceremony in New York City. (In the photo at the top right, Peter is the uneasy-looking kid holding onto the pamphlet for dear life. John Vliet Lindsay, the very non-Greek Mayor of NYC, is in the center.)
Sensing Brooklyn was no place for young writers, Peter’s parents moved the family to Freeport, New York. His first two experiences with fiction: playing a dog in a production of “Jack and the Beanstalk” while wearing a penguin suit … and trying to convince his parents that four consecutive report card grades of “U” in Self-Control meant Useful instead of Unsatisfactory. He began writing novels during math class, in little notebooks tucked into his textbook.
In high school, Peter was a band kid — marching band, jazz band, concert band — until a friend told him the girls in the chorus were better looking. He thus discovered singing, an affliction that was to last the rest of his life. He performed in plays and musicals (to stay out of trouble) and on the school radio station (to stay out of home room). But he didn’t think much about writing until he was asked to contribute to the April Fools issue of the school newspaper (its name, Flashings, was changed to Flushings for the occasion). Peter’s piece (left) started a long tradition of writing under false names.
Chapter 3. Haaavad
Despite this checkered record, and perhaps owing to a clerical error, Peter was accepted into Harvard. His classmates included Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Wall Street TV guru Jim Cramer, and world’s-10th-most-powerful-woman Zoe Cruz. He didn’t know any of them, to the lasting chagrin of his parents.
Peter majored in biochemistry in college, for reasons completely unknown. He also sang a cappella with the Harvard Krokodiloes (left), became their musical director, and went on to appear as a very convincing old man in a production of the musical Cabaret. Shortly thereafter, the notorious Tom Lehrer cast Peter as the President of the United States in a staged reading of the musical Of Thee I Sing (center right). Alas, a rather thoughtless act of bravado (below right), which his parents blame on lasting psychological effects of Hurricane Diane, brought an ignominious end to Peter’s college career.
After this, Peter decided to pursue a career in law.
Chapter 4. Life Upon the Wicked Stage
Peter found work as a paralegal in a Wall Street law firm and enrolled in law school. But a summer singing-waiter job on Nantucket Island (left) somehow convinced him to pursue a career in the musical theater instead. He was in a dreadful production of Man of LaMancha, was featured in a New York Times article about Broadway hopefuls; then landed the Broadway show They’re Playing Our Song, touring with it all over the country (top right). In summer-stock and regional theater he played lead roles in plays such as West Side Story (center right), Cabaret, Pirates of Penzance (bottom right), and Fiddler on the Roof and acted alongside Jack Lemmon, John Raitt, Jane Powell, and Victor Garber. During this time he dabbled with dangerous outdoor activities, such as running a New York City Marathon and rock-climbing in Yosemite Park during a major earthquake.
Between jobs he was a waiter at a fancy New York steakhouse but was fired for biting his fingernails, a habit common to Harvard alums. Dejected, he visited his girlfriend, Tina deVaron (left) and noticed that her roommate was copyediting a memoir by G. Gordon Liddy — in her room, on her own time. This kind of work seemed perfect (you could even bite your nails!). Peter immediately contacted publishers via the phone book and lied his way into earned a job as an editor. Soon he was writing books (and juggling three careers — editor, writer, and actor) and somehow convinced Tina to marry him. After the birth of their first son, Nick, Peter decided to switch careers — to writing, full-time. So did Nick.
Chapter 5. Author! Author!
Early on, Peter wrote puzzle books and movie novelizations, and ghostwrote for series such as The Hardy Boys, Hardy Boys/ Nancy Drew Supermysteries, The Three Investigators (still extremely popular in Germany), Sweet Valley Twins (and High), and The Baby-sitters Club. In 1990, son Joseph was born into a home full of music (and insane deadlines). Through the ’90s Peter wrote Point Horror best-sellers (The Yearbook and Driver’s Dead) and novels such as It Came from the Cafeteria and Attack of the Killer Potatoes. His scifi Watchers series won Children’s Choice and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers awards, and his thrilling two-book adventure Antarctica was chosen by the JASON Foundation as one of the top polar adventures. Joseph inspired his popular chapter-book series, Abracadabra, which was followed by the million-selling Spy X series. His recent Drama Club series, about a group of high-school actor/singers, drew from his and his sons’ experiences.
Smiler’s Bones, a powerful hardcover historical novel based on the true life story of Minik, the only survivor of six Polar Eskimos brought to New York City in 1897 to be put on display, won unanimous rave reviews, was a Junior Library Guild selection, a 2006 New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, a Bank Street Best Book of 2006, and a Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Recommended Book.
In 2003, Peter was invited by the White House to accompany First Lady Laura Bush to Moscow, with R. L. Stine and Marc Brown, to represent the U. S. in the first Russian Book Festival (center right). He got to fly home on Air Force One, where Dove Bars were served after lunch.
More recently Peter became one of Scholastic’s “Dream Team” of authors for their New York Times bestselling series, The 39 Clues, a ground-breaking ten-book adventure series designed to increase readership by encouraging involvement with the adventure online. After the publication of his book, The Sword Thief, he toured the country, visiting schools, bookstores, libraries, and festivals from coast to coast, while recording five mysterious video blogs chronicling his own search for a Clue. The Sword Thief was Amazon’s #5 bestselling children’s book for 2009. His second 39 Clues book, The Viper’s Nest (Book 7), was published in February 2010, and in 2011 he contributed (along with Rick Riordan, Gordon Korman, and Jude Watson) to Book 11, Vespers Rising.
Chapter 6. Recently Seen in Public
With more than 160 books under his belt and more than four million copies sold, Peter occasionally manages to break free from his writing studio. He has become known for his lively, informative school visits before audiences of all sizes and ages, from Brooklyn to San Francisco to Moscow. A strong advocate of literacy and the encouragement of reluctant readers, Peter has participated in programs such as R.U.S.H. for Literacy with New York Giant star Justin Tuck and has been the recipient of a National Book Foundation Family Literacy Program author residency. He has also conducted workshops for the Highlights Foundation and the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Peter lives in New York City, in a building exactly fifty steps from Central Park. His wife, Tina deVaron, is an awesome singer/pianist/ songwriter who has written hit songs and plays regularly at the Carlyle Hotel. Their older son, Nick, is a musician and teacher; and their younger son, Joe, is a student at
Kenyon College.
How to Pronounce “Lerangis”: Peter’s Handy Guide
I travel a lot to schools, bookstores, conventions, and small mossy granite caves, and the first question I’m asked is How do you pronounce your last name? Here’s the answer:
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Lir-ANN-jiss. Soft G. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
That’s Lir as in sir. Ann as in answer. Jiss as in jiss’ say it!
Now, this is not an easy last name to master. In fact, it’s the only one of its kind in the world. People get it wrong a lot. My family has received mail addressed to names from Li to Lescoufflair. By now all the Lerangii (which is the approved plural) have gotten used to this. Let’s face it, Lerangis has no easy mental associations, like Miller or Goldsmith. It doesn’t come trippingly off the tongue like, say, R. L. Stine or Marc Brown or Ann Martin. So if you say Lir-RANGE-iss (like “deranged”), Lir-ON-jiss (like “ON/off”), Lir-ANG-uss (rhymes with “angus”) or Lir-ANN-jeez (rhymes with “the river Ganges”) — or even if you say Lear– instead of Lir-, that’s OK. Wrong, but OK.
If you say, however, Legrangis or Legaris or Lorangutan or Lorenzo or DeAngelis or Schultz or Bruce Coville, then I may burst into bitter tears.
For you language mavens, Lerangis is actually kind of a made-up name. My original Greek name is even harder to pronounce and perhaps rather frightening to see: Παναγιώτης Λυραντζής.
This is pronounced Panagiotis Lyrantzis (approximately). What does it mean? Depends on how you spell it. Lyrantzis means “one who plays the lyre.” Lirantzis would be “one who plays with lira (or banker).” Of course, it could just mean “one who is a liar.” Which, come to think of it, would be perfectly suited to a fiction writer. Personally, I love my Greek name. I grew up with it. It’s what my grandparents and Greek School teacher used to call me. But you don’t have to. Really.
In fact, let’s keep it our little secret.
Peter Lerangis
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Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis
Born 1955 (age 69–70)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation Author
Nationality American
Education Harvard University (BA)[1]
Notable works Seven Wonders series, 39 clues series
Spouse Tina deVaron
Website
peterlerangis.com
Peter Duncan Lerangis[2] (born 1955, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author of children's and young adult fiction, best known for his Seven Wonders series and his work on the 39 Clues series.
Life and career
Lerangis's work includes the Seven Wonders series, all five books of which made The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Books. He was also the author of The Viper's Nest and The Sword Thief, two titles in the New York Times-bestselling children's-book series The 39 Clues, along with the second entry in a four-novella collection, Vespers Rising. This book served as an introduction to a six-book 39 Clues sequel entitled Cahills Vs. Vespers,[3] for which he wrote the third book, The Dead of the Night. His other books include the historical novel Smiler's Bones, the YA novel Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am (with Harry Mazer), the YA dark comedy-adventure novel wtf, the Drama Club series, the Spy X series, the Watchers series, the Abracadabra series, and the Antarctica two-book adventure, as well ghost-writing for series such as the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys Casefiles, Sweet Valley Twins, and more than forty books in the series The Baby-sitters Club and its various spin-offs.[4] He has also written novels based on film screenplays, including The Sixth Sense, Sleepy Hollow, and Beauty and the Beast, and five video game novelizations in the Worlds of Power series created by Seth Godin.[5] As a ghostwriter he has been published under the name A. L. Singer.[6]
Lerangis is the son of a retired New York Telephone Company employee and a retired public-elementary-school secretary, who raised him in Freeport, New York on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biochemistry, while acting in musicals[7] and singing with and musically directing the a cappella group the Harvard Krokodiloes.[8][9] Peter was said to have been classmates with Bill Gates in college before he dropped out and founded the company Microsoft. Upon graduation, Peter moved to New York where he worked as an actor[10] and freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author.[11]
In 2003, Lerangis was chosen by First Lady Laura Bush to accompany her to the first Russian Book Festival, hosted by Russian First Lady Lyudmila Putina in Moscow.[12][13] Authors R. L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Marc Brown (the Arthur the Aardvark series) also made the trip with Bush.[12]
Also in 2003, Lerangis was commissioned by the United Kingdom branch of Scholastic to write X-Isle, one of four books that would relaunch the Point Horror series there.[14] A sequel, Return to X-Isle, was published in 2004.
In 2007, Scholastic announced the launch of a new historical mystery series called The 39 Clues, intended to become a franchise.[15] Lerangis wrote the third book in the series, The Sword Thief, published in March 2009.[16][17][18] On March 3, 2009, Scholastic announced that Lerangis would write the seventh book in the series, The Viper's Nest.[17][19]
In 2016, Lerangis traveled to Patan Dhoka, Nepal where he was the guest speaker at Bal Sahitya Mahotsav, the first children's literature festival in Nepal.[20]
Lerangis lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron. He has two grown children, Nick and Joe.[21]
Bibliography
Watchers series
Last Stop (November 1, 1998, eBook reissue March 20, 2012[22])
Rewind (November 1, 1998, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
I.D. (January 1, 1999, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
War (April 1999, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
Island (July 1, 1999, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
Lab 6 (October 1, 1999, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
Antarctica series
Journey to the Pole (2000, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
Escape from Disaster (2000, eBook reissue March 20, 2012)
Abracadabra series (with Jim Talbot)
Poof! Rabbits Everywhere (April 1, 2002)
Boo! Ghosts in School (April 1, 2002)
Presto! Magic Treasure (July 2002)
Yeeps!: Secrets in the Statue (October 1, 2002)
Zap! Science Fair Surprise! (January 2003)
Yikes! It's Alive! (April 2003)
Whoa! Amusement Park Gone Wild! (July 1, 2003)
Wow! Blast from the Past! (October 2003)
Spy X series
The Code (July 1, 2004 - Scholastic)
Hide and Seek (October 1, 2004 - Scholastic)
Proof Positive (January 1, 2005 - Scholastic)
Tunnel Vision (May 1, 2005 - Scholastic)
The Party Room series
Published under the pseudonym Morgan Burke.[23]
Get it Started (2005)
Last Call (2005)
Lost Girls (omnibus, 2015)
Drama Club series
The Fall Musical (September 6, 2007)
The Big Production (September 6, 2007)
Too Hot! (March 13, 2008)
Summer Stars (July 17, 2008)
The 39 Clues series
Main article: The 39 Clues
The Sword Thief (March 3, 2009)
The Viper's Nest (February 2, 2010)
Vespers Rising (April 5, 2011)
The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers series
The Dead of Night (March 6, 2012)
Seven Wonders series
The Colossus Rises (February 5, 2013)
Lost in Babylon (October 29, 2013)
The Tomb of Shadows (May 13, 2014)
The Curse of the King (March 3, 2015)
The Legend of the Rift (March 8, 2016)
Seven Wonders Journals
The Select and The Orphan (April 22, 2014)
The Key (February 10, 2015)
The Promise (February 9, 2016)
Max Tilt series
Fire the Depths (October 3, 2017)
80 Days or Die (July 24, 2018)
Enter the Core (February 19, 2019)
Throwback series
Throwback (October 1, 2019)
The Chaos Loop (May 5, 2020)
Out of Time (March 23, 2021)
Other novels
Smiler's Bones (February 1, 2005)
wtf (November 10, 2009)
Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am (February 7, 2012), with Harry Mazer
Beasties (April 22, 2025)[24]
Others (ghost-writing, licensed characters)
License to Drive (novelization) (1988), writing as A. L. Singer
Sing (novelization) (1989), A. L. Singer (0-59042-151-4/978-0-59042-151-5)
Little Monsters (novelization) (1989), writing as A. L. Singer
Dick Tracy (junior novelization) (1990), writing as A. L. Singer (0-307-12400-2)
Walt Disney's Classic: The Rescuers Down Under (novelization) (1990), writing as A. L. Singer (0-590-44365-8)
Bingo (novelization) (1991), writing as A. L. Singer
Disney's Robin Hood (novelization) (1992), writing as A. L. Singer (1-56282-138-5)
Disney's Beauty and the Beast (novelization) (1992), writing as A. L. Singer (1-56282-051-6)
Disney's Aladdin (novelization) (1992), writing as A. L. Singer (1-56282-241-1)
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (novelization) (November 1, 1992), writing as A. L. Singer
Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty (novelization) (1993), writing as A. L. Singer (1-56282-368-X/978-1-56282-368-9)
Surf Ninjas (novelization) (1993), writing as A. L. Singer
Miracle on 34th Street (novelization) (1994), writing as A. L. Singer
The Swan Princess (novelization) (1994), writing as A. L. Singer
The Amazing Panda Adventure (novelization) (1995), writing as A. L. Singer
The Baby-Sitters Club (novelization) (1995), writing as A. L. Singer
Sleepy Hollow (novelization) (1999) (0-67103-665-3/978-0-67103-665-2
M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense: A Novelization (2000) (0-439-20163-2/978-0-439-2016-36)
The Road to El Dorado (novelization) (2000) (0-7696-1669-0/978-0-7696-1669-8)
Batman Begins: The Junior Novel (June 2005) (0-439-72509-7/978-0-439-72509-5)
Awards
Last Stop, the first book in Lerangis's science fiction/mystery series Watchers, was selected by the American Library Association as a 1999 Best Book for Reluctant Readers.[11]
War, the fourth book in the series Watchers, was selected by the International Reading Association and the Children's Book Council as a 2000 Children's Choice book.[25]
Lerangis's 2006 historical novel Smiler's Bones was a Junior Library Guild selection and was named among the New York Public Library Best Books for Teens 2006[26] and the Bank Street Best Books of 2006.[21]
Somebody Please Tell Me Who I Am was awarded the 2013 Schneider Family Book Award from the American Library Association, given to "honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences"[27] and was also chosen that year for the ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults list.[28]
The Seven Wonders series books have been named Junior Library Guild selections[29]
Throwback: The Chaos Loop. By Peter Lerangis. May 2020. 304p. Harper, $17.99 (9780062406415). Gr. 5-8.
The second installment of the Throwback trilogy sees Corey diving deeper into a time-traveling habit, and as he successfully makes an impact through a number of smaller changes, he hopes to do something bigger. With the help of his best friend, Leila, he decides to go back and stop Hitler. Their trip to WWII Germany doesn't go as planned, however, and Corey is finally forced to face a growing addiction to rewriting history--and the consequences involved. This new adventure explores more of Corey's abilities as it hits upon another devastating time that changed the course of human history. Through the perspective of a 13-year-old, Lerangis infuses a hopefulness through the genuine belief that individuals have the power to make the world better. This time, Leila's presence adds a fresh dynamic to the adventure, and Chaos Loop proves even more fun than the first book in the series, with more action, crazy antics, time-travel shenanigans, and a meaningful exploration of history.--Elizabeth Konkel
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Konkel, Elizabeth. "Throwback: The Chaos Loop." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 16, 15 Apr. 2020, p. 74. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A623790448/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=15cfb9cb. Accessed 7 Aug. 2025.
Lerangis, Peter THE CHAOS LOOP Harper/HarperCollins (Children's None) $17.99 5, 5 ISBN: 978-0-06-240641-5
A young time traveler decides to “go big” with his ability by killing Hitler.
Corey, 13, learned in trilogy opener Throwback (2019) that changing the past has unpredictable consequences both historical and personal, such as the small but real chance of returning from a jaunt transformed into an animal. Nevertheless, he figures it’s worth the risk. Much as she disagrees, fellow traveler Leila tags along, serving as both voice of reason and translator as the two repeatedly hop back to the early 20th century. For better or worse, though, the past turns out to have a certain resilience…to the point that Corey’s efforts to kill Hitler in Munich in 1939 or at least kick-start his artistic career in 1908 Vienna utterly fail. In the end Corey does manage to work a lesser change by saving the lives of a group of Polish resistance fighters, including his own great uncle, in the last days of World War II—at disturbingly great cost. In this fast-paced follow-up, Lerangis brushes on a light wash of credible period detail based on actual events. He also casts Hitler as a lost (but resolutely anti-Semitic) young man who winds up in a final, lurid encounter as a mad-eyed monster, demonstrating that writing him as a character may be as hard as stopping him. Corey is of mixed European and Puerto Rican heritage; Leila’s is European Jewish.
A provocative scenario with twists painful and droll make this sequel worth the…time. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Lerangis, Peter: THE CHAOS LOOP." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A617193070/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9f686d2b. Accessed 7 Aug. 2025.
Lerangis, Peter BEASTIES Harper/HarperCollins (Children's None) $18.99 4, 22 ISBN: 9780063285385
Central Park may not be a literal jungle, but it's still plenty dangerous for a group of sixth graders who find themselves transformed into small animals.
In a madcap romp that boils over with breathless adventures, hilarious banter, and wild plot twists, Riley Trent comes upon a mysteriously glowing pile of poop that turns him into a rat even as his uber-competent twin sister, Kate, and several other classmates are similarly changed into a random array of creatures ranging from a raccoon to a water bug. Despite having left their human clothes behind, the children are, understandably, desperate to change back. Unfortunately, the only cure seems to be exposure to asecond pile of magic poop--which has gone missing. Though Lerangis has his squabbling Beasties bond over their shared predicament, and despite frictions and contrasting character types, he shows more interest in concocting ever more unlikely revelations and situations to challenge his young ensemble cast. And though all the frantic escapades and rescues in the face of deadly threats--from street traffic to animal and human foes--do lead at last to a satisfying resolution, the author saves one final sequel-portending spin for the end that readers aren't likely to see coming. One adult character speaks in an exaggerated "Noo Yawk" accent; some names cue ethnic diversity in the cast supporting the white-presenting siblings.
A knee-slapping creature feature.(Adventure. 8-12)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Lerangis, Peter: BEASTIES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A828785309/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5622567d. Accessed 7 Aug. 2025.