Part of Series
New York Times Bestselling author Peter Lerangis delivers a well-cast drama with his third installment in the Drama Club series. For the Spring production, the Drama Club decides to do something different, something meatier. So they convince Mr. Levin to let them do an independent production of a serious play—a play with issues—and raw language—and some controversy. (Just the thing to impress those college admissions boards.) When opening night comes around, the show has a piddling turnout. The audience is nearly silent, and the cast thinks it’s a flop. But the next night the place is packed. The second performance is electric. Great, right? Not exactly. A parent lodges a complaint, saying the play is inappropriate for high school. Then someone publishes a piece in the school paper that makes the rehearsal process appear to be rife with all kinds of sordid behavior. There is a huge outcry from the parents and from the school administration, and Mr. Levin is in real trouble. Now the Drama Club members have to band together to help save their advisor from being fired! "Overall, a solid and well-cast production."— School Library Journal on The Big Production
Author
Lerangis' work includes The Viper's Nest and The Sword Thief, two titles in the children's-book series The 39 Clues, the historical novel Smiler's Bones, 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 ghostwriting 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.[1] 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.[2] As a ghostwriter he has been published under the name A. L. Singer.[3] 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[4] and singing with and musically directing the a cappella group the Harvard Krokodiloes,[5][6] before moving to New York. He worked there as an actor[7] and freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author.[8] 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.[9][10]Authors R. L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Marc Brown (the Arthur the Aardvark series) also made the trip with Bush.[9] 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.[11] 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.[12] Lerangis wrote the third book in the series, The Sword Thief, published in March 2009.[13][14][15] On March 3, 2009, Scholastic announced that Lerangis would write the seventh book in the series, The Viper's Nest.[14][16] Lerangis lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, and their sons Nick and Joe.[17]
