Barbara Wersba | |
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| Born | August 19, 1932 Chicago |
| Died | February 18, 2018 (aged 85) Englewood, New Jersey |
| Alma mater | Bard College |
| Genre | Children's |
Barbara Wersba (August 19, 1932 Chicago - February 18, 2018 Englewood, New Jersey) was an American youth and children's book author.
Barbara Wersba grew up in California and later in New York City, where she attended a private school and attended theater workshops. She studied at Bard College. After graduation, she returned to Greenwich Village and took acting lessons with Paul Mann. After several years at the theater, she began writing in the 1960s. [1]
She is the author of thirty children's and teen books. The Dream Watcher was first published in 1968. In 1973, she won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Children's Literature Award) for Run softly, go fast, and in 1985, she was nominated for the award for The carnival in my mind. In 1977 she was nominated for the prestigious National Book Award for Tunes for a Small Harmonica . In addition, Wersba worked for many years as an author for the New York Times Review of Books. [1] In 1994, she founded her own, small publishing house with The Bookman Press. [2]
She is best known for her work for young adolescents. At the center of her novels are often sensitive, often artistically gifted young people who feel misunderstood in their family environment, and find encouragement and self-affirmation in friendships with more unconventional, sometimes significantly older people. [3] [4]
Louise Perkins Fitzhugh was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Fitzhugh is best known for her 1964 novel Harriet the Spy, a fiction work about an adolescent girl's predisposition with a journal covering the foibles of her friends, her classmates, and the strangers she is captivated by. The novel was later adapted into a live action film in 1996. The sequel novel, The Long Secret, was published in 1965, and its follow-up book, Sport, was published posthumously in 1979. Fitzhugh also wrote Nobody's Family Is Going to Change, which was later adapted into a short film and a play.
Barbara Robinson was an American author and writer of the children's books The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (1972) and The Best School Year Ever (1994).
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Nancy Barbara Bond is an American author of children's literature. In 1977 her first book, A String in the Harp, was fantasy novel with an element of folklore, set in West Wales. It received a Newbery honor and the Welsh Tir na n-Og Award, and remains in print.
Charlotte Zolotow was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of many books for children. She wrote about 70 picture book texts.
M. K. Brown is an American cartoonist and painter whose work has appeared in many publications, including National Lampoon (1972–1981), Mother Jones, Wimmen's Comix, The New Yorker, Playboy, among others. She has written several books, created animations for The Tracey Ullman Show, and was a contributing artist to the "comic jam" graphic novel The Narrative Corpse. She is also an accomplished painter with work in galleries and many private collections.
Maia Teresa Wojciechowska was a Polish-American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Her first book and two books for adults were published under her married name Maia Rodman.
Jerry Pinkney was an American illustrator and writer of children's literature. Pinkney illustrated over 100 books since 1964, including picture books, nonfiction titles and novels. Pinkney's works addressed diverse themes and were usually done in watercolors.
Maira Kalman is an American artist, illustrator, writer, and designer known for her painting and writing about the human condition. She is the author and illustrator of over 30 books for adults and children and her work is exhibited in museums around the world. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Jack Sendak was an American children's literature author. He was the brother of Maurice Sendak and the son of Philip Sendak.
Martin Waddell is a writer of children's books from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He may be known best for his picture book texts featuring anthropomorphic animals, especially the Little Bear series illustrated by Barbara Firth.
John Steptoe was an author and illustrator for children’s books dealing with aspects of the African-American experience. He is best known for Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, which was acknowledged by literary critics as a breakthrough in African history and culture.
Tunes for a Small Harmonica is a novel by Barbara Wersba about an adolescent tomboy named J.F. McAllister. It was originally published by Dell Publishing but was then reprinted by Harper and Row publishing. It was a finalist for the 1977 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The novel has been translated into Catalan, Dutch, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
My Weird School is a series of humorous chapter books written by Dan Gutman and illustrated by Jim Paillot, first published in July 2004. Further series include My Weird School Daze (2008-2011), My Weirder School (2011-2014), My Weirdest School (2015-2018), My Weirder-est School (2019-2022), and My Weird-tastic School (2023-2024).
Andrea Modica is an American photographer and professor of photography at Drexel University. She is known for portrait photography and for her use of platinum printing, created using an 8"x10" large format camera. Modica is the author of many monographs, including Treadwell (1996) and Barbara (2002).
Louis Joseph Halle Jr. was an American naturalist, author, U.S. State Department official, and professor of international studies in Geneva.
Elizabeth Acevedo is an American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.
Renée Watson is an American teaching artist and author of children's books, best known for her award-winning and New York Times bestselling young adult novel Piecing Me Together, for which she received the John Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Bank Street Children's Book Committee's Josette Frank Award for fiction. Watson founded the nonprofit I, Too, Arts Collective to provide creative arts programs to the Harlem community. She is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Laura Freeman is a children's book illustrator. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has illustrated many books, and done work for Highlights for Children. In a review of the picture book version of Hidden Figures, writing for School Library Journal, Megan Kilgallen said "Freeman’s full-color illustrations are stunning and chock-full of details, incorporating diagrams, mathematical formulas, and space motifs throughout... enhancing the whole book." She shared the 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Children with writer Margot Lee Shetterly for Hidden Figures.
A harmonica, or mouth organ, is a free-reed wind instrument.
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