Jeanne Birdsall

Jeanne Birdsall is an American author of novels and picture books for young readers. She grew up in the suburbs west of Philadelphia and decided as a child that she wanted to be a writer, but she did not begin writing until her forties. In the years before that she held a range of jobs and worked as a photographer, and her photographs are held in the permanent collections of museums including the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Her first novel, The Penderwicks (2005), follows four sisters, their father and their dog through a summer on a grand Massachusetts estate. It won the 2005 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and became the first of a five-book series that includes The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and ends with The Penderwicks at Last. Both of the first two books were New York Times bestsellers.

Birdsall has also written picture books, among them Teaflet and Roog Make a Mess and My Favorite Pets, and the chapter book The Library of Unruly Treasures. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.