Authors Similar like Kerry O'Malley Cerra

Ele Fountain

Ele Fountain worked as an editor in children’s publishing where she was responsible for launching and nurturing the careers of many prize-winning and bestselling authors.

She lived in Addis Ababa for several years, where she was inspired to write Boy 87, her debut novel. Ele lives in what she describes as a “not quite falling down house” in Hampshire with her husband, two young daughters and lots of spiders.

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Maggie C. Rudd

Maggie C. Rudd is from rural North Carolina where she lives with her two boys. When she isn't writing, she is teaching high school, making forts, or outside getting muddy with her kids. She is the author of the picture book I'll Hold Your Hand.

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Jaime Formato

Jaime Formato is a writer, elementary school teacher, and tiefling rogue from northern Florida. Her days are spent hanging out with kids and reading, and the nights are for D&D, hockey, and writing. She lives in a little house by the woods with her amazing husband, their beautiful children, two cats that don’t love her enough, two dogs that love her too much, and a whole lotta nature.

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Gabriella Aldeman

Gabriella Aldeman is a Panamanian American author. She writes picture books in hopes that more children become readers and for all readers to feel seen. She is also a professional translator, and holds degrees from Georgetown University and the College of William and Mary. Gabriella lives in Fairfax, VA, with her partner and two children. Please visit her at https://www.writebetween.com/ or @write_between on Twitter or Instagram.

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Tanya Guerrero

Tanya Guerrero is Filipino and Spanish by birth, but has been fortunate enough to call three countries home—the Philippines, Spain, and the United States. Currently, she lives in a shipping container home in the suburbs of Manila with her husband, daughter, and a menagerie of rescued cats and dogs. She has volunteered for animal welfare organizations since 2008, focusing on Trap/Neuter/Return and Rescue/Foster/Adopt. In her free time, she grows her own food, bakes, and reads. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux BYR has published three of her middle grade books, How to Make Friends with the Sea (2020), All You Knead is Love (2021) and Adrift (2022), which have been nominated for state awards, been selected for the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard S

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Gordon Korman

Gordon Korman is a Canadian author of children's and young adult fiction books. Korman's books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide over a career spanning four decades and have appeared at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

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Ann Brashares

Ann Brashares is an American young adult novelist. She is best known as the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.

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Laurie Halse Anderson

UPDATE! Rebellion 1776 is out! The New York Times wrote, "Filled with immersive detail, expert delineations of complex characters, and both harsh and loving reality, Rebellion 1776 provides young readers with a true experience of a historic moment in time that resonates with today's world." Huzzah!

Laurie Halse Anderson is the New York Times-bestselling author of many award-winning books including the groundbreaking, modern classic Speak, a National Book Award finalist which has sold over 3.5 million copies and been translated into 35 languages.

In 2023, Anderson was named the Laureate of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, long considered to be the de facto 'Nobel Prize for Children's Literature.'

A passionate spokesperson for the need to c

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Mari Mancusi

Mari Mancusi grew up where the north wind meets the sea (otherwise known as Massachusetts), but has since made her home in the great state of Texas, mostly due to her love of summer. (And tacos.) A former Emmy Award winning TV news producer, today she is the author of more than two-dozen books for kids, teens, and adults, mostly of the sci-fi/fantasy variety. In addition to writing, Mari loves traveling, video games, and cosplaying. She is also Mom to an eight year old Frozen superfan who, when recently asked by her teacher to describe her hero answered: “My Mom!” (Okay, fine, she said Kristin Bell.)

You can find Mari online at www.marimancusi.com. She knows several Samanthas.

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Gennifer Choldenko

There’s a Lego in my bum which fits with the Lego in my chair and when I sit down to write, I hear the satisfying snap of the two pieces fitting together. I love words, dictionaries, thesauruses, sharp pencils, the smell of book ink and the delicious art of carving out sentences on clean white paper. I love to slip into another person’s skin and feel what it’s like to live another life. I love when characters come to me out of nowhere and make me cry so hard my mascara runs or laugh until my stomach hurts. I love the crazy fun and infinite possibility of storytelling.

What prepared me for a life of writing fiction? Though I have a BA from Brandeis University in English and American Literature and a BFA in illustration from Rhode Island Schoo

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Alan Gratz

Alan Gratz is the bestselling author of a number of novels for young readers. His 2017 novel Refugee has spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and is the winner of 14 state awards. Its other accolades include the Sydney Taylor Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Award, a Charlotte Huck Award Honor, and a Malka Penn Award for Human Rights Honor. Refugee was also a Global Read Aloud Book for 2018.

Alan’s novel Grenade debuted at number three on the New York Times bestseller list, and his most recent book, Allies, debuted at number two on the list and received four starred reviews. His other books include Prisoner B-3087, which was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Readers pick and

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Gayle Forman

Award-winning author and journalist Gayle Forman has written several bestselling novels for young adults, including the Just One Series, I Was Here, Where She Went and the #1 New York Times bestseller If I Stay, which has been translated into more than 40 languages and in 2014 was adapted into a major motion picture.

Gayle published Leave Me, her first novel starring adults in 2016 and her latest novel, I Have Lost My Way, comes out in March of 2018.

Gayle lives with her husband and daughters in Brooklyn.

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James Ponti

James Ponti is the New York Times Bestselling author of three Middle Grade book series: the DEAD CITY trilogy about a secret society that polices the undead who live beneath New York City; the Edgar Award-winning FRAMED! series about a pair of Sherlockian tweens who solve mysteries in Washington, D.C.; and the all-new CITY SPIES about an unlikely squad of five kids from around the world who form an elite MI6 spy team.

James grew up in Atlantic Beach, Florida and lives in Orlando. He's a die hard fan of the Boston Red Sox, the USC Trojans, and the Italian National Soccer Team. He loves travel, writing, and spending time with his amazing family.

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Lyn Miller-Lachmann

I've practiced writing ever since I was six years and invented an entire classroom of 24 kids who wanted to be my friends. The following year, my mother gave me a typewriter, and I started putting my stories on paper. It was my way of creating a world where everything worked out the way I wanted it to.

When I became a high school teacher, I started collecting my students’ stories, and I incorporated these into my first efforts to write for others. I taught English to refugees from Latin America and organized concerts of Latin American music, and the people I met inspired and encouraged me to write the novel that years later would become Gringolandia. After Gringolandia came out in 2009, I enrolled in the MFA program in Writing for Children &

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Padma Venkatraman

American author, Padma Venkatraman, has worked as chief scientist on oceanographic ships and spent time under the sea, directed a school, and lived in 5 countries. Her 5 novels, BORN BEHIND BARS, THE BRIDGE HOME, A TIME TO DANCE, ISLAND’S END and CLIMBING THE STAIRS, were released to multiple starred reviews (22 as of 8/30/21), and won numerous honors and awards (e.g. WNDB Walter Award 2020; SCBWI Golden Kite Award 2020; Paterson Prize; Julia Ward Howe Young Readers Award; South Asia Book Award; ALA, IRA Notable; Booklist, Kirkus, NYPL, Yalsa BBYA; CCBC choice; IBBY outstanding etc.). Her latest novel, BORN BEHIND BARS, a JLG selection, is available for order. She provides keynote addresses and commencement speeches, travels to internationa

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Faith Erin Hicks

Born in the wilds of British Columbia, the young Faith frolicked among the Sasquatch native to the province before moving to Ontario at age five. There she was homeschooled with her three brothers, and developed an unnatural passion for galloping around on horseback, though never without a proper helmet (because you only get one skull). After twenty years of suffering through Ontario’s obscenely hot summers, she migrated east, and now lives beside the other ocean in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She worked in animation for a bit, and now draws comics full time. She’s not sure how that happened either.

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Lynne Kelly

Lynne Kelly's career as a sign language interpreter has taken her everywhere from classrooms to hospitals to Alaskan cruises. Today, she lives near Houston, Texas with her adorable dogs, Abigail and Eloise. Her 2019 novel SONG FOR A WHALE, about a deaf girl named Iris who forms an unlikely bond with the “loneliest whale in the world,” has been described as “finely crafted,” “important,” and “uplifting” by reviewers from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and School Library Journal. SONG FOR A WHALE received the 2020 Schneider Family Book Award and was named one of the best books of the year by New York Public Library.
Her next novel, THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF BIRDS, will be released in April 2024.

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Jessica Khoury

Jessica Khoury wrote her first book at age 4, a fan fic sequel to Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur, which she scribbled on notebook paper, stapled together, and placed on the bookshelf of her preschool classroom. Since that day, she's dreamed of being an author.

When not writing, Jess enjoys spending time with family, playing video games, and oil and watercolor painting. She is also a professional mapmaker, and spends far too much time scribbling tiny trees and mountains for fictional worlds.

Jess currently lives in Greenville, South Carolina. She is the author of the Corpus trilogy, The Forbidden Wish, Last of Her Name, and The Mystwick School of Musicraft.

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Lindsay Currie

Lindsay Currie is a #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of mysteries for young readers, including the Delta Games series and It's Watching, She grew up on Nancy Drew and loves a good twisty tale. When she's not writing, Lindsay can generally be found looking for an adventure of her own. She loves researching forgotten history and recently relocated from Chicago to a 220 acre farm in downstate Illinois where she finally gets to see stars every night, and take hikes every day.

Coming soon: THE HOUSE WITH NO KEYS (October 2025) and X Marks the Haunt (February 2026)! For more details on Lindsay's upcoming books, please visit the My Books tab at the top of the page.

To find out more about Lindsay, please visit her website at www.

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Sally J. Pla

Sally J. Pla is the author of ALA Schneider Award-winning THE FIRE, THE WATER, AND MAUDIE McGINN, the Dolly Gray Award-winning THE SOMEDAY BIRDS, and other acclaimed novels and picture books. Her work has gained many awards and starred reviews, and has been included on many state awards lists and “best book” roundups.

Sally has appeared on television and radio as an author and neurodiversity advocate. She also runs A Novel Mind, an online resource for neurodiversity/mental-health/disability representation in children's lit.

Sally believes in the beauty of different brains. We are all stars shining with different lights.

For more, visit her website at sallyjpla.com .

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Scott Reintgen

Scott Reintgen grew up in North Carolina, and took full advantage of the fact that he lived on the same street as fourteen of his cousins. It could be a little crowded, but he threw a few elbows and carved out a space for himself as the family storyteller. He enjoyed the role so much that he decided to spend most of college and graduate school investing in the world of literature. This led to a career teaching English and Creative Writing in the great state of North Carolina, where he currently lives with his wife and family. To his great delight, the demand for stories and storytellers is alive and well. As such, he can often be found at local coffee shops laboring over stories that he hopes his family, and fans, will love.

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Karina Yan Glaser

Originally from California, Karina came to New York City for college and has stuck around for nearly twenty years. She has had a varied career teaching and implementing literacy programs in family homeless shelters and recruiting healthcare professionals to volunteer in under resourced areas around the world. Now as a mother, one of her proudest achievements is raising two kids who can’t go anywhere without a book. She lives in Harlem with her husband, two daughters, dog, cat, and house rabbit.

Karina is a contributing editor at Book Riot where she writes about children's books and her life as a reader.

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Jenni L. Walsh

Jenni L. Walsh is the USA Today bestselling author of over a dozen books for adults and children, spending her days knee deep in words in Philadelphia’s suburbia. Beyond words, Jenni is a mama (of a soulful eleven-year-old, a soccer-loving nine-year-old, and six needy furbabies), a wife, a Philly and 'Nova sports fan.

But where did it all begin? Jenni spent her early years dabbling in various forms of writing and with her nose in a book. Her writing chops first began to develop through one-page stories. Never fail, the storyline followed the same progression: girl meets boy, girl marries boy, girl and boy have baby. That's it.

Now Jenni has moved on to stories with a bit more depth and, for the mamas, Side by Side is a historical women's fic

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Ele Fountain

Ele Fountain worked as an editor in children’s publishing where she was responsible for launching and nurturing the careers of many prize-winning and bestselling authors.

She lived in Addis Ababa for several years, where she was inspired to write Boy 87, her debut novel. Ele lives in what she describes as a “not quite falling down house” in Hampshire with her husband, two young daughters and lots of spiders.

Buy books on Amazon

Jaime Formato

Jaime Formato is a writer, elementary school teacher, and tiefling rogue from northern Florida. Her days are spent hanging out with kids and reading, and the nights are for D&D, hockey, and writing. She lives in a little house by the woods with her amazing husband, their beautiful children, two cats that don’t love her enough, two dogs that love her too much, and a whole lotta nature.

Buy books on Amazon

Tanya Guerrero

Tanya Guerrero is Filipino and Spanish by birth, but has been fortunate enough to call three countries home—the Philippines, Spain, and the United States. Currently, she lives in a shipping container home in the suburbs of Manila with her husband, daughter, and a menagerie of rescued cats and dogs. She has volunteered for animal welfare organizations since 2008, focusing on Trap/Neuter/Return and Rescue/Foster/Adopt. In her free time, she grows her own food, bakes, and reads. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux BYR has published three of her middle grade books, How to Make Friends with the Sea (2020), All You Knead is Love (2021) and Adrift (2022), which have been nominated for state awards, been selected for the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard S

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Ernesto Cisneros

Ernesto Cisneros is a veteran English teacher currently serving the colorful city of Santa Ana, California. He holds an English degree from the University of California, Irvine; a teaching credential from California State University, Long Beach; as well as a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University.

Whenever his knees will allow it, he enjoys playing basketball, running, and swimming. He likes to read contemporary books with realistic characters and meaningful storylines full of heart. He is an avid music and ketchup lover, and he still follows the Lakers—even post Kobe.

As a writer, he believes in providing today’s youth with honest depictions of characters with whom they can identify. He believes the real world is f

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Alicia D. Williams

What's there to know about Alicia D? Well, that depends on who you ask.

If you ask kindergartners, they'd tell you:

1. She likes chunky guacamole.

2. She likes shiny things.

3. She tells good stories.

If you ask her middle schoolers, they'd surely say:

1. She gets us.

2. She makes us laugh with all her jokes.

3. She is Da BOMB.

While all of these may be true, there are a few more points to add . . . Alicia D. is a teacher in Charlotte, NC. She is the proud mother of a brilliant college student. Her love for education stems from conducting school residencies as a Master Teaching Artist of arts-integration. Alicia D infuses her love for drama, movement, and storytelling to inspire students to write. And like other great storytellers, she made the leap

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Maggie C. Rudd

Maggie C. Rudd is from rural North Carolina where she lives with her two boys. When she isn't writing, she is teaching high school, making forts, or outside getting muddy with her kids. She is the author of the picture book I'll Hold Your Hand.

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Shifa Saltagi Safadi

Shifa Saltagi Safadi was born in Syria and immigrated to the US with her parents when she was a young girl. She is a bilingual Arabic/English speaker, and is very familiar with the challenges of learning English and navigating two languages.
As a mom to four Arab American children and a former English teacher to Middle School students, (and an author!) she now spends her time helping kids develop a love of reading and writing too.

You can learn more about her books on her website shifasafadi.com

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Ernesto Cisneros

Ernesto Cisneros is a veteran English teacher currently serving the colorful city of Santa Ana, California. He holds an English degree from the University of California, Irvine; a teaching credential from California State University, Long Beach; as well as a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University.

Whenever his knees will allow it, he enjoys playing basketball, running, and swimming. He likes to read contemporary books with realistic characters and meaningful storylines full of heart. He is an avid music and ketchup lover, and he still follows the Lakers—even post Kobe.

As a writer, he believes in providing today’s youth with honest depictions of characters with whom they can identify. He believes the real world is f

Buy books on Amazon

Kerry O'Malley Cerra

Total similar authors (31)