Susan Campbell Bartoletti (she/her)
“I’m often asked if I write the books I do to teach readers or to show them how good they have it today. I don’t. I hope that my work gives readers courage — courage to question, courage to think critically, courage to stand up, and most of all, courage to make a difference.”
Biography
What magic turns readers into believers? Spins ideas into stories? Casts people into characters? Transforms facts into fiction and nonfiction?
Susan Campbell Bartoletti answers these questions in engaging content-rich presentations that cover the research and writing process and the true stories of young people during critical times in history.
Her latest nonfiction book is How Women Won the Vote: Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, & Their Big Idea. Other nonfiction titles include the Newbery Honor nonfiction book Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, the acclaimed They Called Themselves the Ku Klux Klan: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, Kids on Strike!, the Sibert-medal winning Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, and award-winning Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America. She also co-edited two year-based nonfiction anthologies, 1968: A Year of Rebellion, Revolution, & Change and 1789: A Year of Rebellion, Revolution, & Change with Marc Aronson.
Her work has received dozens of awards and honors, including the Newbery Honor, the ALA Robert F. Sibert Award for Nonfiction, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Nonfiction, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Honor for picture book writing, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction, and the Washington Post/ Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award for her body of work. Her work has also been named Junior Library Guild selections.
Despite writing about difficult subjects, Susan insists that she has a good sense of humor, no doubt a defense mechanism developed as a result of teaching eighth grade for eighteen years. She holds a BA in English from Marywood University, an MA in English from the University of Scranton, and a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University (New York) where she won the Excellence in Research award.
Gallery
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