William (Warner) Sleator (III) (1945–) Biography

Surname is pronounced "slay-tir"; born 1945, in Havre de Grace, MD; Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1967; studied musical composition in London, England, 1967–68. Politics: "Independent."

Addresses

Agent—Sheldon Fogelman, 10 East 40th St., New York, NY 10016.

William Sleator

Career

Author, composer, and musician. Royal Ballet School, London, England, accompanist, 1967–68; Rambert School, London, accompanist, 1967–68; Boston Ballet Company, Boston, MA, rehearsal pianist, 1974–83; freelance writer, 1983–.

Member

Honors Awards

Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1969; Boston Globe-Horn Book Illustration honor, Caldecott Medal Honor Book, American Library Association (ALA), and Honor List citation, Horn Book, all 1971, and American Book Award for Best Paperback Picture Book, 1981, all for The Angry Moon; Children's Book of the Year Award, Child Study Association of America, 1972, and Notable Book citation, ALA, both for Blackbriar; Best Books for Young Adults citation, ALA, 1974, for House of Stairs, 1984, for Interstellar Pig, 1985, for Singularity, and 1987, for The Boy Who Reversed Himself; Children's Choice Award, International Reading Association/Children's Book Council, 1979, and CRABbery (Children Raving about Books) Award honor book, Maryland Library System, 1980, both for Into the Dream; Notable Book citation, ALA, and Honor List citation, Horn Book, both 1984, both for Interstellar Pig; Best Book of the Year Award, School Library Journal, 1981, for The Green Futures of Tycho, 1983, for Fingers, and 1984, for Interstellar Pig; Golden Pen Award, Spokane, WA, Public Library, 1984, 1985; Junior Literary Guild selection, 1985, for Singularity; ALA Notable Book selection, and Best Book for Young Adults designation, both 1993, both for Oddballs.

Writings

(Reteller) The Angry Moon, illustrated by Blair Lent, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1970.

Blackbriar, illustrated by Lent, Dutton (New York, NY), 1972.

Run, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973.

House of Stairs, Dutton (New York, NY), 1974.

Among the Dolls, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, Dutton (New York, NY), 1975.

(With William H. Redd) Take Charge: A Personal Guide to Behavior Modification (adult nonfiction), Random House (New York, NY), 1977.

Into the Dream, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson, Dutton (New York, NY), 1979.

Once, Said Darlene, illustrated by Steven Kellogg, Dutton (New York, NY), 1979.

The Green Futures of Tycho, Dutton (New York, NY), 1981.

That's Silly (easy reader), illustrated by Lawrence DiFiori, Dutton (New York, NY), 1981.

Fingers, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1983.

Interstellar Pig, Dutton (New York, NY), 1984.

Singularity, Dutton (New York, NY), 1985.

The Boy Who Reversed Himself, Dutton (New York, NY), 1986.

The Duplicate, Dutton (New York, NY), 1988.

Strange Attractors, Dutton (New York, NY), 1990.

The Spirit House, Dutton (New York, NY), 1991.

Oddballs: Stories (semi-fictionalized autobiography), Dutton (New York, NY), 1993.

Others See Us, Dutton (New York, NY), 1993.

Dangerous Wishes (sequel to The Spirit House), Dutton (New York, NY), 1995.

The Night the Heads Came, Dutton (New York, NY), 1996.

The Beasties, Dutton (New York, NY), 1997.

The Boxes, Dutton (New York, NY), 1998.

Rewind, Dutton (New York, NY), 1999.

Boltzmon!, Dutton (New York, NY), 1999.

Into the Dream, Puffin (New York, NY), 2000.

Marco's Millions, Dutton (New York, NY), 2001.

Parasite Pig, Dutton (New York, NY), 2002.

The Boy Who Couldn't Die, Amulet Books (New York, NY), 2004.

The Last Universe, Amulet Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Also contributor of short stories to the collections Am I Blue? Coming out from the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Bauer, and Things That Go Bump in the Night, edited by Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg. Composer, with Blair Lent, of musical score for animated film Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky, 1972. Composer of scores for professional ballets and amateur films and plays.

Adaptations

The Angry Moon was released on audiocassette by Read-Along-House; Interstellar Pig was released on audiocassette by Listening Library, 1987.

Sidelights

A popular and prolific writer of fiction for children and young adults, William Sleator is regarded as a particularly original and imaginative author whose works use the genres of fantasy, mystery, and science fiction to explore personal relationships and growth. Sleator incorporates current scientific theories, suspense, and the supernatural in his books, which challenge readers to take active roles in the stories while allowing them to resonate with the feelings and experiences of his characters. Depicting boys and girls who are often reluctant heroes, Sleator takes his characters from their everyday lives into confrontations with unusual, even unnerving situations. His protagonists encounter alien beings, doppelgangers, ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, black holes, evil spirits, malevolent dolls, weird scientific experiments, time travel into the past and the future, and other strange phenomena. In addition, they must learn to deal with brothers and sisters—sibling rivalry is a consistent theme—as well as with their parents and peers. Through their physical and emotional journeys, the young people in Sleator's stories discover strength and confidence within themselves while developing a greater understanding of life in general. Characteristically, Sleator ends his books with the situations seemingly resolved and his characters secure; however, he is fond of including surprising twists, hinting that perhaps things are not quite so rosy as readers may think.

As a writer, Sleator is often credited for setting a darkly humorous tone. Although many of his books are scary, he often laces suspense with tongue-in-cheek humor. The author is praised as a skilled creator of plot and character as well as for his ability to blend the real and the surreal. In addition, Sleator is lauded for his insight into human nature, especially in the area of family relationships, and for creating fully realized worlds in haunting, thought-provoking page-turners. Although his works are often considered demanding and disturbing, and his use of ambiguous endings is sometimes questioned, he is generally considered a talented author of rich, fascinating books that appeal to young readers on several levels. Writing in Children's Books and Their Creators, Peter D. Sieruta noted, "Sleator has continued to show growth as a writer, and his skillful translation of scientific theories into entertaining fiction has resulted in an important body of work." School Library Journal contributor David Gale commented on the author's "singular talent for writing astonishing science fiction novels," while in Horn Book, Roger Sutton dubbed him "the master of the juvenile creepy-crawly." Writing in English Journal, Margaret L. Daggett stated, "Sleator succeeds with adolescents because he blends enough scientific realities with supernatural possibilities to tantalize the mind and the imagination. Readers feel refreshed after the intellectual and emotional challenges in Sleator's novels…. He sets us in a reality and helps us stretch our imaginations."

Born in Havre de Grace, Maryland, Sleator is the eldest son of William Warner Sleator, Jr., a physiologist and professor, and Esther Kaplan Sleator, a physician. Sleator and his siblings—brothers Daniel and Tycho and sister Vicky—grew up in University City, Missouri, a predominantly Jewish suburb of St. Louis, where the family moved after the author's father was hired by the University of St. Louis. "My parents," Sleator once explained, "always encouraged us to be whoever we were." Sleator began studying the piano at the age of six and at around the same time he wrote his first story. "From that point on," he wrote in his biographical sketch for The Scoop, "I was always writing or composing something. And almost from the very beginning, I was fascinated by the grotesque and the macabre." One of his first musical compositions was called "Guillotines in the Springtime." Of this piece, Sleator commented: "I suppose it came from the kind of stories, mostly science fiction, I read as a kid." As a small boy, he wrote a story, "The Haunted Easter Egg," for a school assignment about Easter. Sleator recalled that his parents "thought it was great. Of course, that was before they realized that I was going into this bizarre career without any security, but they encouraged me at the time."

In addition to science fiction and comic books, Sleator began reading works about the physical sciences. He said: "Everybody in my family is a scientist except me. I always liked science but was never good enough to be a real scientist; I was the dumbest person in the advanced class. Still, I learned a lot. I prefer science fiction that has some basis in reality; psychological stories, time-travel stories, but especially stories about people." In high school, Sleator continued writing poems and stories and composing music; he also learned to play the cello. He wrote in The Scoop, "When the school orchestra played one of my compositions at an assembly, everybody thought I was a genius. I did nothing to correct this impression." However, as Sleator remembered: "I wasn't a complete nerd. I rebelled with drugs, sex—all the things every kid goes through. My parents weren't happy about it, but they were looser about it than most."

After high school, Sleator attended Harvard University, where he intended to study musical composition. However, he felt that the nature of the music program was too restrictive, so he become an English major, but continued to write music for student plays and films. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1967, he moved to London, England, where he studied musical composition for a year while working as a pianist at the Royal Ballet School and the Rambert School. During this period, he lived in the middle of a forest in an ancient cottage that had once been a pest house for people with smallpox. He shared the cottage with his landlady, a sixty-ish woman who tried to treat Sleator as a son. This experience became the subject of his first book for young people, Blackbriar. Before its publication, Sleator collaborated with his friend, illustrator Blair Lent, on the picture book The Angry Moon. A retelling of a Tlingit Indian legend, the story describes how a girl, Lapwinsa, is taken away by the moon after she laughs at it. Her friend, the boy Lupan, rescues her by making a ladder out of arrows and climbing into the sky. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly noted that "books like The Angry Moon appear only once in a blue moon." The critic stated that Lent "has topped himself with this one, perhaps because William Sleator gave him such a strong story to illustrate." Writing in School Library Journal, Ann D. Schweibish added that The Angry Moon is a "highly successful adaptation and visualization" of the traditional tale.

In Blackbriar, which, like The Angry Moon, is also illustrated by Lent, Sleator describes how Danny, a teenage boy, struggles for independence from his middle-aged guardian, Philippa, with whom he shares a haunted, isolated cottage in the English countryside. Danny and Philippa are shunned by the locals because of the perception that they are linked to Satanism. After Philippa and her cat are kidnapped, Danny and his friend Lark search for her. In the process, Danny discovers a lot about himself and learns the secret of the cottage, which served as a pesthouse during a seventeenth-century plague. A critic in Kirkus Reviews advised, "Bolt the cellar door, watch your cat closely for personality changes, and follow him—vicariously." Ashley Darlington Grayson, writing in Fantasy Review, stated that Danny "fails to earn any reader respect because he is thick as a post." However, Paul Heins, writing in Horn Book, noted that "the effectiveness of the story lies in its characterization and in its narrative skill."

In 1974, Sleator began working as a rehearsal pianist for the Boston Ballet while continuing to write fiction. With the dancers, he toured the United States and Europe and wrote three ballets performed by the company. House of Stairs, a book published the same year Sleator joined the Boston Ballet, is considered among his best. A young adult novel set in a huge room that contains a labyrinthine maze of stairways leading nowhere, the story outlines how five orphaned sixteen year olds learn to survive in a world without walls, ceilings, or floors. The young people, who eat only if they perform dance-like rituals in front of a machine, eventually realize that they are part of a stimulus/response experiment in which food is dispensed when the subjects display hostile behavior toward each other. When two of the protagonists refuse to perform the cruel acts that are required to obtain food, the scientists end the experiment. Compared by critics to such works as Brave New World and Lord of the Flies, House of Stairs is generally regarded as an exceptional study of human behavior as well as an exciting story. Called "brilliant, bone-chilling," by a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, the novel was dubbed "forceful sci fi based on Skinnerian precepts that will have readers hanging by the skin of their teeth" by School Library Journal reviewer Pamela D. Pollack. Writing in her Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature, Sheila A. Egoff described the story as "one of the most brutal in science fiction, all the more sickeningly compelling because of its finely controlled, stark writing." Sleator maintained: "In House of Stairs, the kids who refused to become conditioned by hate were being human in the end, as opposed to trained animals. I always stress that. I'm not saying to be nice to other people because it's good; I'm saying, think about how other people feel because it's practical. I'm not making any moralistic, goody-goody kind of point. You will get along better with people if you are able to understand them." Sleator has also written other stories for young people that explore behavior; in addition, he is the author of Take Charge: A Personal Guide to Behavior Modification, an informational book for adults on which he collaborated with William H. Redd.

Sleator considers The Green Futures of Tycho, a story for middle graders, to be a watershed book in his career. While working in his family's garden, eleven-year-old Tycho finds a strange silver egg that was planted by aliens thousands of years before. The egg, a time-travel device, allows Tycho to go into both the past and the future. At first, Tycho uses his abilities to tease his four brothers and sister. He then meets his adult self in the future and finds that the figure is becoming more and more evil and manipulative. For example, the adult Tycho uses his knowledge of the future dishonestly and also wreaks destruction on his siblings. At the end of the story, Tycho's love for his family leads him to reject his powerful but vile grownup persona; he risks death to bury the egg back in the past.

In a School Library Journal review of The Green Futures of Tycho, Pollack noted, "Sleator's expert blend of future and horror fiction is unusually stark, dark, and intriguing." Writing in Horn Book, Paul Heins added that though "the combination of logic and horror gives the telling a Poe-like quality … the moral significance" of the happenings becomes clear. Sleator once said: "I really got in touch with my weirdness in [The Green Futures of Tycho]. That was the first book into which I was able to inject humor, and I feel humor is important. Even in a basically serious, or even a scary piece, there must be comic relief to reduce the tension. Humor is also very attractive to kids."

In 1983, Sleator left his job as an accompanist for the Boston Ballet to become a full-time author. Interstellar Pig, a young adult novel published the following year, is regarded by critics as one of his most popular books. In this work, sixteen-year-old Barney faces a boring summer at the beach with his doltish parents. He is intrigued when an interesting trio of strangers—Joe, Manny, and Zena—moves in next door and invites him to join them in playing a role-playing board game called Interstellar Pig. The object of the game is to possess the Piggy, a card named for a pink symbol that is an integral part of the game. However, Barney's neighbors turn out to be hostile aliens masquerading as humans, and the game turns real—and deadly. It places Barney in a life-and-death struggle for survival; at the end of the story, Barney saves both himself and planet Earth by using his head. Writing in School Library Journal, Trev Jones stated, "Sleator's science fiction story is compelling on first reading—but stellar on the second." New York Times Book Review critic Rosalie Byard called Interstellar Pig "a riveting adventure that should satisfy readers in the 12-to 14-year-old range, especially any who happen to be hooked on strategy games." Writing in Junior Bookshelf, Marcus Crouch called the novel a "remarkable story" that is "surprisingly readable," adding that "the curious details of the game get right into the reader's system." Sleator maintained, "Interstellar Pig is my funniest book. There were a lot of opportunities for humor in it."

In Parasite Pig, a sequel to Interstellar Pig, Barney is back, and he is once again playing the dangerous game Interstellar Pig. The Piggy, the game's goal, is located on the planet J'koot and Barney and friends must travel there to find it. But terrible creatures, including flesh-eating crabs, must be overcome before Barney can win the game. Michele Winship in Kliatt believed that "Sleater's SF adventure is filled with tongue-in-cheek humor and likeable characters." Similarly, Betty Carter in Horn Book noted that "the aliens are well-developed characters, and the action proceeds at a furious pace." Miranda Doyle, writing in the School Library Journal, dubbed Parasite Pig "a sometimes dark, sometimes silly, always entertaining read."

Inspired by Sleator's interest in Thai culture—he spends half of each year living in Thailand—The Spirit House, a young adult novel that incorporates Thai beliefs. Considered a stylistic departure from Sleator's other works, the story focuses on fifteen-year-old Julie, who meets Bia, an exchange student from Thailand, when he comes to stay with her family. Julie's younger brother Dominic builds Bia a "spirit house," or a traditional household shrine, in the backyard to make him feel at home. When Bia becomes convinced that the house is inhabited by a vengeful spirit, Julie leaves offerings for the spirit, who appears to grant her wishes. However, Julie's health begins to decline, and things begin to go badly for her, her family, and Bia. At the end of the story, Julie goes to Thailand with a jade carving containing the spirit in order to restore it to its rightful place. All appears to be well until Julie loses the carving. Calling The Spirit House "both scary and convincing," Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books reviewer Roger Sutton commented that "all of the events of the story are entirely possible, if unremittingly frightening." In a Washington Post Book World review, S. P. Somtow added that The Spirit House is a book "that provides no easy answers … and the ending packs a satisfying punch." Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a contributor com-
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mented, "Best … is the logical explanation of seemingly supernatural events: the reader suspends belief only to have it systematically restored. That's a feast—and a treat."

Dangerous Wishes, the sequel to The Spirit House, features Julie's younger brother, fourteen-year-old Dominic. After three years of bad luck have passed for Dom and his family, he and his parents travel to Bangkok for an extended stay. When everything goes awry, Dom suspects that the cause may be the jade carving that his sister tried, but failed, to deliver three years earlier. Dom and Kik, a Thai boy, try to find the charm and take it to its temple. In the process, the boys are pursued by a malevolent creature from the spirit world. They barely escape, but are able to restore the recovered charm to its rightful place. However, the question remains: will the bad luck end?

Writing in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Roger Sutton stated that in Dangerous Wishes, "narrative coincidences that would be trite in realistic fiction here have an otherworldly eeriness that makes them convincing." Booklist critic Merri Monks deemed the story "fast-moving," while a reviewer in Horn Book called Dangerous Wishes "Vintage Sleator."

Marco's Millions finds twelve-year-old Marco traveling to a distant planet via a mysterious tunnel discovered in the basement of his house. The aliens he encounters worship what they call a "naked singularity," a force that interconnects multiple universes, allowing travel between them. They need the assistance of Marco and his sister, Lilly, to appease this powerful force. Beth Wright in the School Library Journal called the book "a good choice for readers who enjoy The X-Files or creepier episodes of Star Trek." "Sleator achieves some dazzling effects here," a Horn Book reviewer admitted, while a critic for Publishers Weekly believed that the author's "curious fantasy will spark readers' imaginations."

In Oddballs, Sleator created a collection of ten short autobiographical and semi-autobiographical vignettes about his childhood and adolescence. The stories show four creative, talented children growing up in a household run by free-thinking parents who provide minimal supervision. The book is credited with depicting how, through all of their sibling rivalry and joke-playing, the Sleator children developed individuality, confidence, and independence. Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a critic favorably commented on the author's "splendid sense of comic timing" and "vivid characterizations." Betsy Hearne, writing in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, added that "Sleator evidently thrived without pause on his permissive parents' steady encouragement to violate social taboos."

Writing in School Library Journal, contributor Michael Cart predicted, that while "serious" readers will take the book as "a kind of 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Oddball,'" the majority will "simply relax and enjoy the wacky humor." Sleator, who dedicated Oddballs "To my family: Please forgive me!," noted on the flap copy, "I changed the names of everyone outside the immediate family, of course. But as far as I'm concerned, it's all in all a pretty accurate picture of what life was like. My mother, of course, might not entirely agree."

Sleator writes of zombies and voodoo in The Boy Who Couldn't Die. After teenager Ken Pritchard loses his best friend in a plane crash, he begins to think about ways of avoiding death himself and discovering the key to immortality. When a strange woman offers to remove his soul from his body and keep it safe, thus ensuring an everlasting life, Ken accepts. He finds out too late, however, that the deal he has made has unexpected and dangerous consequences. Only with the help of a new friend, Sabine, can Ken reclaim his soul and save himself. A critic for Publishers Weekly called Ken "an interesting, conflicted hero," while Beth Wright, in School Library Journal, labeled The Boy Who Couldn't Die a "fast-paced, suspenseful book." Paula Rohrlick, In this compelling 2004 novel, a spoiled teen determined to live forever pays an old woman to perform an invulnerablity spell on him, then learns that he morphs into a zombie every time he falls asleep.reviewing the novel in Kliatt, stated that "This horror story is gripping and fast moving, and deliciously creepy."

The Last Universe focuses on Susan, who is spending the summer caring for older brother Gary, who is confined to a wheelchair with a strange illness. The siblings live next to a strange garden originally designed by a scientist. As Susan cares for Gary, and tries to discover just what it is he is suffering from, she also begins to notice that the garden's many mazes have remarkable powers; a walk through a maze can alter the entire world. Susan soon wonders whether the powers may include the ability to cure her brother. A Kirkus Reviews critic found that the story "will keep readers turning pages until the very end of this exploration of multiple universes." Janis Flint-Ferguson in Kliatt called The Last Universe "a perfect 'what if' story."

With Oddballs, Sleator created a collection of ten short autobiographical and semi-autobiographical vignettes about his childhood and adolescence. The stories show four creative, talented children growing up in a house-hold run by free-thinking parents who provide minimal supervision. The book is credited with depicting how, through all of their sibling rivalry and joke-playing, the Sleator children developed individuality, confidence, and independence. Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a critic favorably commented on the author's "splendid sense of comic timing" and "vivid characterizations." Betsy Hearne, writing in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, added that "Sleator evidently thrived without pause on his permissive parents' steady encouragement to violate social taboos."

Writing in School Library Journal, contributor Michael Cart predicted, that while "serious" readers will take the book as "a kind of 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Oddball,'" the majority will "simply relax and enjoy the wacky humor." Sleator, who dedicated Oddballs "To my family: Please forgive me!," noted on the flap copy, "I changed the names of everyone outside the immediate family, of course. But as far as I'm concerned, it's all in all a pretty accurate picture of what life was like. My mother, of course, might not entirely agree."

Regarding his writing, Sleator once explained, "At the beginning, I was copying other things, but with each book, I've learned to tap deeper into my subconscious. The more books I write, the more they represent who I really am…. Also, my style has improved; I'm a better writer, but that goes up and down." He added, "I try to make my books exciting. I also provide incentives in the sense of giving kids a more active role in the story…. My goal is to entertain my audience and to get them to read. I want kids to find out that reading is the best entertainment there is. If, at the same time, I'm also imparting some scientific knowledge, then that's good, too. I'd like kids to see that science is not just boring formulas. Some of the facts to be learned about the universe are very weird." Sleator also noted, "In any idea for a book, I want to see how I can explore the personal relations that would manifest from that idea." Writing in Fifth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, Sleator concluded, "I still consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to write for young people."