Level 4 Die Stadt der Kinder

Andreas Schlüter was born in Hamburg in 1958 and began an apprenticeship as a wholesale merchant after finishing high school. Before starting his career as a journalist and writer, he worked as a supervisor for children's and youth groups. After a stint at the Hamburger Rundschau, he co-founded the journalism office SIGNUM Medienservice in 1990, where he also worked as an editor for various television stations. Nowadays, he dedicates most of his time to writing books. After publishing some short crime stories in 1993, he achieved great success a year later with his first children's novel, Level 4 - The City of Children (dtv junior 70459). In this thrilling narrative, computer games and reality are fascinatingly intertwined, striking a chord with young readers. His protagonists are not little superheroes, but rather ordinary kids who manage to solve problems and escape dangerous situations—without the help of adults, but with mutual support. “I make no distinction between adults and teenagers. I take them seriously.” For Schlüter, children are not unfinished adults, but independent personalities with their own ideas, wishes, longings, and fears. Equally refreshingly unpedagogical is Schlüter's narrative approach to computers and virtual worlds. He views his children's books as a long-overdue challenge to the notion that computers isolate children, and that “those who play computer games do not read.” These are the fears of a generation that is already struggling with its own video recorder.