War, Watchers
A teenage history buff finds himself trapped in the Civil War
Jake Branford has always felt that he was born 150 years too late. A fourteen-year-old Civil War nut, he’s happiest when he’s reading soldiers’ letters, exploring old battlegrounds, or trying on an ancestor’s tattered Union Army cap. Lucky for him, a mysterious film director is in town, working on a Civil War epic, and Jake stumbles onto the secret set. The film set is like nothing he has ever seen. The musket-fire, explosions, and uniforms are all perfectly accurate. Jake is in heaven—until it all gets a little too real. He’s always wanted to fight for the Union—and today he’s going to get his chance. War was selected by the International Reading Association and the Children’s Book Council as a 2000 Children’s Choice. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Peter Lerangis including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis (b. 1955) is a bestselling author of middle-grade and young-adult fiction whose novels have sold more than four million copies worldwide. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Lerangis was working in musical theater when he began editing fiction, which eventually led to writing novels of his own. He got his start writing novelizations under the pen name A. L. Singer, as well as installments of long-running series such as the Hardy Boysand the Baby-sitters Club. Lerangis began publishing under his own name with 1994’s The Yearbook and Driver’s Dead.
In 1998 Lerangis introduced Watchers, a six-novel sci-fi series that won Children’s Choice and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers awards and led to an invitation to dine with the President of Russia at the White House. His other work includes the Abracadabra novels; the Spy X series; Drama Club, a four-book series about high-school theater based on his own Broadway experiences; and exactly three and a quarter books in the New York Times–bestselling 39 Clues series. He lives with his family in New York City, not far from Central Park.
