Jenkins has always dreamed of being an author. She once said, "Growing up, I spent large parts of my life in imaginary worlds: Neverland, Oz, and Narnia, in particular.” She loved reading and when she was eight, she began to develop her own work. After she wrote her own books, Jenkins became interested in writing full-length novel imitations of "Pippi Long Stocking" and "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase". She got inspiration for her later books like "Five Creatures" from her own life. She said, "I wanted to convey the sense of family I had with my pets." Jenkins has a husband, a daughter, and two cats. They all have different skills and preferences, but she used a Venn diagram to overlap their interests.
Jenkins continues to love spending her time living in her imaginary worlds, which she created within her books. She is an admired figure for many young writers and encourages them to pursue their dreams just as she did.
"Jenkins, Emily." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2015. Biography in Context. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Jacqueline Kelly
Jacqueline Kelly is an New Zealand-born American author of children's books.
Jacqueline Kelly was born in New Zealand. She moved to Vancouver Island in Canada at a young age. She moved again to El Paso, Texas where she went to high school and college in Galveston. She went on to get a law degree from the University of Texas. Before becoming a fictional author, she was a doctor and a lawyer.
For "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate", she won the Newbery Honor Book designation, International Reading Association Award, Virginia Law Award, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and Judy Lopez Memorial Award, National Women's Book Association, all 2009, and Josette Frank Award, and the Bank Street College of Education.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is set in 1899 and features eleven year old Calpurnia Tate. The novel documents her struggle with Texas heat, science, embroidery and her family. She falls in love with science by spending time with her grandfather, who is a scientist, and "The Origin of Species", by Charles Darwin. She thoroughly battles the expectations of respectable young ladies during the turn of the century.
"Return to the Willows" is written as a sequel to the "Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame.
Paula Danziger
Paula Danziger (August 18, 1944-July 8, 2004) was an American author of children's and young adult literature.
Danziger was born in Washington, D.C. to Samuel and Carolyn Danziger. Though she struggled in school as a child, she attended Montclair State University in New Jersey and earned a degree in 1967. She was a middle school teacher in New Jersey from 1967-1978 while studying for a Master's degree. Her studies were interrupted when she was in a car crash, where a drunk driver hit her car, and she slammed her head against the front window which caused her to have brain damage. In 1978 she left teaching to write full-time.
Although readers loved her books because of the humor, some critics called them superficial and generic. Others praised her work for tackling real-life issues.
Danziger died in 2004 after complications from a heart attack. She was 59.
Some of the awards Danziger's work received:
Dodie Smith
Dorothy Gladys Smith (born in 1896), commonly known as Dodie Smith, was an English children’s book author and playwright. She is most famous for writing "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" and "I Capture the Castle", both adapted into famous films. Ms Smith had not intended to be a writer. Her first love was acting but, she once admitted, "I simply wasn't very good."
Smith was born on May 3, 1896 in Whitefield, UK. When she was eighteen years old, her father died, so after that she and her mother lived with her family - her grandparents, three uncles and two aunts, in an old house with a garden leaning towards the Manchester Ship Canal. Both her mother and grandmother wrote and composed. Almost everyone in the household sang and played an instrument (including pianos, a violin, a mandolin, a guitar and a banjo) and one uncle, a nonprofessional but decent actor, was usually rehearsing, preferably with Smith there to give him cues. Although she had liked theater for a while before she could read, it was hearing of her uncle's parts which really sparked her passion for acting and writing plays, especially as the cues she gave to her uncle got longer and longer and, by the age of nine, Smith had written a forty-page play.
Even when her mother described her first play as dull and boring, she did not stop trying to succeed. Soon she became a young actress for many theaters after studying at the London’s Royal Academy of Art. During World War I, Smith went to France to help amuse the soldiers there and also appeared in a performance of John Galsworthy's Pigeon. In 1923, the actress left the theater to work as a buyer for Heal and Son, a furniture company where she remained for the next eight years, writing for the stage in cinema in her free time. Smith first gained recognition as a playwright, going by the name of C. L. Anthony until 1935. In 1931, Smith sold her play Autumn Crocus to one of her old stage directors. Although she had written a screenplay and a stage play before, Autumn Crocus proved to be the work that turned her career around. Call It a Day was the first play Smith wrote under her own name; also proving to be her most financially rewarding piece. Her plays, generally simple comedies about middle-class life, received much praise, both popular and critical. "The ability to recreate detail, to capture the nuances of everyday conversation, to recognize humor in the trivialities of middle-class life marks the dramas of Dodie Smith," wrote Martha Hadsel. "Her critics sometimes found fault with what they considered her superficiality, but most admitted that her plays provided enjoyable entertainment." Hadsel claimed Smith to be "one of the few successful women dramatists in England and America during the first half of the twentieth century."
Children’s books:
- The Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1956.
- The Starlight Barking, 1968.
- The Midnight Kittens, 1978.
Plays:
- Call It a Day, 1937.
- Bonnet over the Windmill, 1937.
- (And co-director) Dear Octopus, 1939.
- Autumn Crocus, Service, and Touch Wood, 1939.
- Lovers and Friends, 1944.
- Letter from Paris, 1954.
- I Capture the Castle, 1948.
- These People, Those Books, 1958.
- Amateur Means Lover, 1962.
Novels:
- I Capture the Castle, 1999.
- The New Moon with the Old, 1963.
- The Town in Bloom, 1965.
- It Ends with Revelations, 1967.
- A Tale of Two Families, 1970.
- The Girl from the Candle-lit Bath, 1978.
Autobiographies:
- Look Back with Love: A Manchester Childhood, 1974.
- Look Back with Mixed Feelings, 1978.
- Look Back with Astonishment, 1979.
- Look Back with Gratitude, 1985.
Screenplays:
- (With Frank Partos) The Uninvited (adapted from the novel by Dorothy Macardle), Paramount, 1944.
- (With Lesser Samuels) Darling, How Could You! (adapted from Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire by James M. Barrie), Paramount, 1951.
- Also author of screenplay "Schoolgirl Rebels" (under pseudonym Charles Henry Percy), 1915.
Joan Bauer
Joan Bauer is an American author. She was born on July 12, 1951 in River Forest, Illinois. She was the oldest of four sisters with a teacher for a mother and a salesman for a father. In her teen years, her grandmother got Alzheimer's disease. Soon after this, her father committed suicide. Bauer said her teenage experiences influenced her stories. As a teen, Bauer was a waitress, an assistant, typing teacher, and a freelance writer. Bauer currently lives in Brooklyn, with her husband Evan Bauer, her daughter Jean, and dog Max. She’s working on another book, which is due to be published in early 2016.