Want fewer ads?

Adam Selzer (born July 13, 1980, in Des Moines, Iowa) is an author, primarily of young adult and middle grade novels. His first novel was How To Get Suspended and Influence People, a 2007 Random House novel which was included on the Chicago Public Schools 2007 Summer Reading List. It was also nominated for a Cybils 2007 Young Adult Fiction award Cybils: 2007 Nominations Young Adult Fiction, and, in 2009, made national news after attempts were made to have it removed from an Idaho library ; it was included in the American Library Association's Banned Books Week packet in 2010. It was followed in 2008 by another book, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland, which teenspace called "as invigorating and smoothly satisfying as a good caffe latte." Teenspace - Books & Reading - New Stuff. Like his previous book, it was named a Book Sense Pick for summer, 2008.

In September, 2008, Random House published I Put a Spell On You RandomHouse.ca | Author Spotlight: Adam Selzer, which is about a spelling bee, but is based on Watergate. The Horn Book called it "scathingly funny.," and The Bulletin of Children's Books compared Selzer to Andre Clements and Gordon Korman . It was nominated for a 2009 Great Lakes Book Award and became a noted choice for classroom reading.. His 2009 book, Andrew North Blows Up the World, was his first for younger readers and was hailed as "a work of comic genius."

In 2009, Adam's editor at Random House asked him to write a book based on "I Thought She Was a Goth," a song he had written a decade earlier. The resulting book, "I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It," was released in January 2010. to acclaim from trade reviewers, who described it as "smart," "original," "hilarious," and "a scathing parody of the paranormal romance genre.". Film rights were optioned by Disney Channel Original Movies His next scheduled book, announced in March 2010, is tentatively titled "Tangled Up in Blue," and will be published by Flux .

His first nonfiction book for Random House was The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History , which began to garner acclaim before it was even released. and was selected as a Junior Library Guild selection. Critics frequently compared the humor to that of The Daily Show and Mark Twain

Most of his books (and many of his songs) take place in Cornersville Trace, a fictional suburb of an unnamed midwestern city. Many of his characters and places are named after polka bands, such as Whoopee Norm Eddlebeck and the Dairyland Dutchmen, Myron Floren, and The Van den Berg Orchestra, among others. Polka Catalog

In addition to his book work, Adam works as a historian, tour guide and ghost investigator in Chicago. In 2009, his first adult nonfiction title with a major publisher, Your Neighborhood Gives Me the Creeps, told stories of his life in these fields, He stepped down from his position with Weird Chicago Tours after the Halloween season in 2009., but continues work as a folklorist and historian with a blog charting the folk process in children's street culture including ghost stories popular among children .

Production on the film At Last, Okemah! began in April, 2009. Adam co-wrote the screenplay with director Michael G. Smith, adapting it from a script he had first written "during class in high school." It premiered September 13, 2009 at the Chicago International Reel Shorts Fest, at which is won an Audience Choice award.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Adam Selzer", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0