Anne Snyder; Fiction for Young Adults Treated Real-Life Themes

Anne Snyder, a prize-winning author of young-adult fiction whose novels confronted alcoholism, homelessness, sexuality and other real-life dilemmas, died Feb. 2 at a San Juan Capistrano hospice. She was 78 and had Alzheimer’s disease.

Snyder wrote 17 books, including “50,000 Names for Jeff,” “My Name Is Davy--I’m an Alcoholic” and “First Step.”

Like other novelists who specialized in young-adult reality fiction, she did not believe in sheltering children from perplexing social issues.

Her young readers responded by sending her hundreds of letters each year, often including intimate details of their lives and struggles. She formed friendships with some of them and always tried to reply to their letters with “great dispatch.”

“They tell me their deepest secrets, and if I didn’t answer them, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night,” she told The Times in 1986.

Snyder’s first book, “50,000 Names for Jeff,” was named one of the 10 best children’s books of 1969 by the Child Study Assn. of America for its portrayal of a young black boy’s petition drive to leave his ghetto tenement for new housing in a better neighborhood.

“First Step,” published in 1975, earned the top juvenile award from Friends of American Writers as well as special honors from the National Council of Christians and Jews. The story of a high school girl and her alcoholic mother, it was adapted for television as an ABC Afterschool Special.

Another novel, “Goodbye, Paper Doll,” was one of the first young-adult books to explore anorexia nervosa. It was published in 1980, three years before the disorder leaped to the forefront of public awareness with the death of pop singer Karen Carpenter.

Snyder was born in Boston and grew up in the blue-collar Jewish neighborhoods of Detroit. She attended high school in Detroit and later put herself through two years of college.

In 1949, after marrying and starting a family, she moved to Los Angeles, where she began her writing career. She wrote and directed plays for a Westchester theater group called Kentwood Players and for the City of Hope. She also studied creative writing at Los Angeles Valley College.

During the 1970s, she taught creative writing at Valley College and at Pierce College and Cal State Northridge.

Snyder also worked in television. She researched and wrote questions for the “Hollywood Squares” game show and contributed concepts and scripts for “General Hospital” and “The Lucille Ball Show.”

A stylish woman known for her colorful hats, Snyder was a longtime resident of Woodland Hills and Van Nuys. She moved to a retirement community in Oceanside about 10 years ago, then to San Juan Capistrano to be closer to her family. Her last novel, “The Best That Money Can Buy,” was published in 1983, co-written with Louis Pelletier, a frequent collaborator.

Together, they also wrote “Counter Play,” which examined homosexuality, and “Two Point Zero,” which confronted the problem of classroom cheating. The latter work, New York Times reviewer Annie Gottlieb wrote, “does away with another illusion that has been a staple of [young adult] fiction: that of a moral adult universe.”

Snyder stopped writing juvenile books to care for her husband, Louis, who died in 1996. She was writing a semiautobiographical book in recent years.

Her survivors include two daughters, Nathalie Lauro of San Clemente and Mari-beth Berman of Sunland; a sister, Julie Norton of Van Nuys; a brother, Sam Reisner of Lake Hughes; five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.