Mary Botham Howitt
Mary Howitt (12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) was an English poet, and author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly.
She was born Mary Botham at Coleford, in Gloucestershire, the temporary residence of her parents, while her father, Samuel Botham, a prosperous Quaker of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, was looking after some mining property. Samuel had married his wife Ann in South Wales in 1796, when he was 38 and she was 32. They had four children Anna, Mary, Emma and Charles. Their Queen Anne house is now known as Howitt Place. Mary Botham was educated at home, read widely, and began writing verse at a very early age.
If you like author Mary Botham Howitt here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (36)
-
Dan Yaccarino
Exhibitions of his work have been held throughout the world. He is also the creator of the animated TV Series Willa's Wild Life and Oswald.
Buy books on Amazon
Mr. Yaccarino lives in New York City with his wife and two children. -
Paul O. Zelinsky
Born 1953
Buy books on Amazon
Paul O. Zelinsky grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, the son of a mathematics professor and a medical illustrator. He drew compulsively from an early age, but did not know until college that this would be his career. As a Sophomore in Yale College he enrolled in a course on the history and practice of the picture book, co-taught by an English professor and Maurice Sendak. This experience inspired Paul to point himself in the direction of children's books. His first book appeared in 1978, since which time he has become recognized as one of the most inventive and critically successful artists in the field.
He now lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York. They have two grown daughters.
Among many other awards and prizes, he received the 199 -
Mary Norton
Mary Norton (née Pearson) was an English children's author. She was the daughter of a physician, and was raised in a Georgian house at the end of the High Street in Leighton Buzzard. The house now consists of part of Leighton Middle School, known within the school as The Old House, and was reportedly the setting of her novel The Borrowers. She married Robert C. Norton in 1927 and had four children, 2 boys and 2 girls. Her second husband was Lionel Boncey, who she married in 1970. She began working for the War Office in 1940 before the family moved temporarily to the United States.
Buy books on Amazon
She began writing while working for the British Purchasing Commission in New York during the Second World War. Her first book was The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Be -
Marc Brown
Marc Tolon Brown is perhaps best known for his series of children's books about Arthur the aardvark, which was turned into an animated television show on PBS. Brown is a three-time Emmy Award winner, for his role on the television show inspired by his books.
Buy books on Amazon
He lives on Martha's Vineyard and in New York City with his wife, Laurie Krasny Brown. He has three children, sons Tolon and Tucker, and daughter Eliza. The names of his two sons have been hidden in all of the Arthur books except for one: Arthur's Tooth. -
Rachel Kolar
Rachel Kolar is the author of several short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, most of which fall under the umbrella of "dark speculative fiction." She lives with her husband and two children in the Baltimore/Washington area. When not writing stories or changing diapers, she enjoys playing overly complicated board games, hiking, and getting far too excited about Halloween.
Buy books on Amazon -
Ellen J. Lewinberg
Ellen Lewinberg has a master's degree in social work and is a trained child and adult psychoanalyst. She worked as a psychoanalyst for many years until a health issue introduced her to energy healing. She was so excited by the potential of energy healing that she trained and currently works as an energy healer.
Buy books on Amazon
Ellen realized that young children experience a connection to energy and the unseen, but forget this knowledge as they grow older. She wanted to remind both older children and adults how important it is for themselves and the world around them to remember the connections. -
Michael Hall
Michael Hall is the author/illustrator of The New York Times bestseller, My Heart Is Like a Zoo, as well as the critically acclaimed Perfect Square, It’s an Orange Aardvark, Red: A Crayon’s Story, and Frankencrayon.
Buy books on Amazon
Before becoming a children’s author, Michael was an award-winning graphic designer whose work — including graphic identities for the City of Saint Paul, Macalester College, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Hennepin County Medical Center — has been widely recognized for its simple and engaging approach.
Michael lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. -
Kevin Noble Maillard
Kevin Maillard is Professor of Law at Syracuse University, a contributor to the New York Times and a co-founder of Black Stream Partners LLC. He has written for The Atlantic and has provided on-air commentary to ABC News and MSNBC. He is the debut author of Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, a picture book illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, which won the Sibert Medal and the American Indian Youth Literature Honor. An enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, he is based in Manhattan, NY.
Buy books on Amazon -
Juana Martinez-Neal
Juana Martinez-Neal is the recipient of the 2019 Caldecott Honor for “Alma and How She Got Her Name” (Candlewick Press), the 2018 Pura Belpré Medal for Illustration for "La Princesa and the Pea" (written by Susan M. Elya, Putnam), and the 2020 Sibert Medal for “Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story” (written by Kevin Noble Maillard, Roaring Brook Press).
Buy books on Amazon
Juana was named to the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honor list in 2014, and was awarded the SCBWI Portfolio Showcase Grand Prize in 2012. She was born in Lima, the capital of Peru, and now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband, two sons, and daughter. -
Peter Brown
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Buy books on Amazon
Peter Brown is an American writer and illustrator who is best known for children's picture books.
"Peter has always loved telling stories. Growing up in New Jersey, he told stories by drawing whimsical characters and scenes from his imagination. Then, as a teenager, he fell in love with writing, and told his tales with words. While studying illustration at Art Center College of Design, Peter’s love of both words and pictures led him to take several courses on children’s books, and before long he knew he’d found his calling.
After graduating from Art Center Peter moved to New York City to be closer to the publishing in -
Lauren Oliver
Lauren Oliver is an author, screenwriter, and media entrepreneur. She is the author of the upcoming novels WHAT HAPPENED TO LUCY VALE (Sep 1, 2025) and THE GIRL IN THE LAKE (May 2026). Her previous works include multiple New York Times bestselling novels for teens, including Before I Fall (which spent seventeen weeks on the list and was adapted into a feature film released by Open Road), the Delirium trilogy (a two-million-copy-selling dystopian series translated into thirty-five languages), and Panic, which she later adapted into the streaming TV show on Amazon Prime of the same name, for which she wrote every episode and served as Executive Producer. Along the way, Lauren founded the IP company StoryGiants and helped to package and edit n
Buy books on Amazon -
J.K. Rowling
See also: Robert Galbraith
Buy books on Amazon
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she -
Peter H. Reynolds
Peter Hamilton Reynolds is an author and illustrator of children's books and is the co-Founder and CEO of educational media company FableVision.
Buy books on Amazon -
William H. Armstrong
William H. Armstrong (1911 - 1999) was an American children's author and educator, best known for his 1969 Newbery Medal-winning novel, Sounder.
Buy books on Amazon
In 1956, at the request of his school headmaster, he published his first book, a study guide called Study Is Hard Work. Armstrong followed this title with numerous other self-help books, and in 1963 he was awarded the National School Bell Award of the National Association of School Administrators for distinguished service in the interpretation of education.
In 1969, Armstrong published his masterpiece, an eight-chapter novel titled Sounder about an African-American sharecropping family. Praised by critics, Sounder won the John Newbery Medal and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1970, and was adapted i -
Paul O. Zelinsky
Born 1953
Buy books on Amazon
Paul O. Zelinsky grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, the son of a mathematics professor and a medical illustrator. He drew compulsively from an early age, but did not know until college that this would be his career. As a Sophomore in Yale College he enrolled in a course on the history and practice of the picture book, co-taught by an English professor and Maurice Sendak. This experience inspired Paul to point himself in the direction of children's books. His first book appeared in 1978, since which time he has become recognized as one of the most inventive and critically successful artists in the field.
He now lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York. They have two grown daughters.
Among many other awards and prizes, he received the 199 -
Pam Adams
Pam Adams (1919-2010) was a British children's book author and illustrator, and a graphic designer. Born in Swindon in 1919, she was educated at the Swindon Art College and at the Central School of Art in London, and worked for many years as a graphic designer in the advertising field. In the 1970s she returned to Swindon, and teamed up with Michael Twinn, who had recently founded the publishing house Child’s Play. Her first children's book, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly, was published in 1972, and remains a bestseller for the publishing house. After writing and illustrating countless other picture-books, Adams died in 2010, at the age of 91.
Buy books on Amazon -
Mo Willems
#1 New York Times Bestselling author and illustrator Mo Willems is best known for his Caldecott Honor winning picture books Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny: a cautionary tale.
Buy books on Amazon
In addition to such picture books as Leonardo the Terrible Monster, Edwina the Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct, and Time to Pee, Mo has created the Elephant and Piggie books, a series of early readers, and published You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons, an annotated cartoon journal sketched during a year-long voyage around the world in 1990-91.
The New York Times Book Review called Mo “the biggest new talent to emerge thus far in the 00's."
Mo’s work books have been translated into a myriad of languages, spawned animated shorts -
Stan Berenstain
Stan and Jan Berenstain (often called The Berenstains) were American writers and illustrators best known for creating the children's book series the Berenstain Bears. Their son Mike Berenstain joined them as a creative team in the late 1980s.
Buy books on Amazon -
Jacqueline Wilson
Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath in 1945, but spent most of her childhood in Kingston-on-Thames. She always wanted to be a writer and wrote her first ‘novel’ when she was nine, filling in countless Woolworths’ exercise books as she grew up. As a teenager she started work for a magazine publishing company and then went on to work as a journalist on Jackie magazine (which she was told was named after her!) before turning to writing novels full-time.
Buy books on Amazon
One of Jacqueline’s most successful and enduring creations has been the famous Tracy Beaker, who first appeared in 1991 in The Story of Tracy Beaker. This was also the first of her books to be illustrated by Nick Sharratt. Since then Jacqueline has been on countless awards shortlists and has gone -
David Wiesner
During David Wiesner's formative years, the last images he saw before closing his eyes at night were the books, rockets, elephant heads, clocks, and magnifying glasses that decorated the wallpaper of his room. Perhaps it was this decor which awakened his creativity and gave it the dreamlike, imaginative quality so often found in his work.
Buy books on Amazon
As a child growing up in suburban New Jersey, Wiesner re-created his world daily in his imagination. His home and his neighborhood became anything from a faraway planet to a prehistoric jungle. When the everyday play stopped, he would follow his imaginary playmates into the pages of books, wandering among dinosaurs in the World Book Encyclopedia. The images before him generated a love of detail, an admirati -
Virginia Lee Burton
Virginia Lee Burton was an American illustrator and children's book author. Burton produced seven self-illustrated children's books. She married Boston Museum school sculptor, George Demetrios, with whom she had two sons and lived in Folly Cove, Gloucester. She died at 59.
Buy books on Amazon -
Rafe Martin
Rafe Martin is an award-winning author and storyteller, as well as a lay Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani koan line. He is founding teacher of Endless Path Zendo, Rochester, NY.
Buy books on Amazon
He is the recipient of the prestigious Empire State Award for the body of his work, as well as multiple American Library Association Notable Book Awards and Parent's Choice Gold Awards. He has been featured at such storytelling events as the Joseph Campbell Festival of Myth and Story, The Sierra Storytelling Festival, and the National Storytelling Festival. He is the father of two grown children and lives with his wife, Rose, in Rochester, NY. -
Mary Norton
Mary Norton (née Pearson) was an English children's author. She was the daughter of a physician, and was raised in a Georgian house at the end of the High Street in Leighton Buzzard. The house now consists of part of Leighton Middle School, known within the school as The Old House, and was reportedly the setting of her novel The Borrowers. She married Robert C. Norton in 1927 and had four children, 2 boys and 2 girls. Her second husband was Lionel Boncey, who she married in 1970. She began working for the War Office in 1940 before the family moved temporarily to the United States.
Buy books on Amazon
She began writing while working for the British Purchasing Commission in New York during the Second World War. Her first book was The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Be -
Dave Barry
Dave Barry is a humor writer. For 25 years he was a syndicated columnist whose work appeared in more than 500 newspapers in the United States and abroad. In 1988 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Many people are still trying to figure out how this happened.
Buy books on Amazon
Dave has also written many books, virtually none of which contain useful information. Two of his books were used as the basis for the CBS TV sitcom "Dave's World," in which Harry Anderson played a much taller version of Dave.
Dave plays lead guitar in a literary rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose other members include Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson and Mitch Albom. They are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud. Dave has also made many TV appeara -
Carolyn Keene
Carolyn Keene is a writer pen name that was used by many different people- both men and women- over the years. The company that was the creator of the Nancy Drew series, the Stratemeyer Syndicate, hired a variety of writers. For Nancy Drew, the writers used the pseudonym Carolyn Keene to assure anonymity of the creator.
Buy books on Amazon
Edna and Harriet Stratemeyer inherited the company from their father Edward Stratemeyer. Edna contributed 10 plot outlines before passing the reins to her sister Harriet. It was Mildred Benson (aka: Mildred A. Wirt), who breathed such a feisty spirit into Nancy's character. Mildred wrote 23 of the original 30 Nancy Drew Mystery Stories®, including the first three. It was her characterization that helped make Nancy an instant -
L. Frank Baum
also wrote under the names:
Buy books on Amazon
* Edith van Dyne,
* Floyd Akers,
* Schuyler Staunton,
* John Estes Cooke,
* Suzanne Metcalf,
* Laura Bancroft,
* Louis F. Baum,
* Captain Hugh Fitzgerald
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author best known for his children's fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels (not including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. He made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen; the 1939 adaptation of the first Oz book became a landmark of 20th-century cinema.
Born and raised in Chittenango, New York, Baum moved west after an unsuccessful stint as a theater producer -
Yann Martel
Yann Martel is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
Buy books on Amazon
Martel is also the author of the novels The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil, and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to Canada's Prime Minister 101 Letters to a Pri -
Mercer Mayer
Mercer Mayer is an American children's author and illustrator. He has published over 300 books, using a wide range of illustrative styles. Mayer is best known for his Little Critter and Little Monster series of books.
Buy books on Amazon -
Mary Pope Osborne
Mary Pope Osborne is an American author of children's books and audiobook narrator. She is best known as the author of the Magic Tree House series, which as of 2017 sold more than 134 million copies worldwide. Both the series and Osborne have won awards, including for Osborne's charitable efforts at promoting children's literacy. One of four children, Osborne moved around in her childhood before attending the University of North Carolina. Following college, Osborne traveled before moving to New York City. She somewhat spontaneously began to write, and her first book was published in 1982. She went on to write a variety of other children's and young adult books before starting the Magic Tree House series in 1992. Osborne's sister Natalie Po
Buy books on Amazon -
Mahlon F. Craft
Mahlon F. Craft came to writing late in life. Beauty and the Beast is his second published work as an author. He is a graduate of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After completing postgraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s, he worked as an award-winning art director and graphic designer. Beauty and the Beast is the ninth picture book of his design.
Buy books on Amazon -
Molly Idle
Molly Idle has been drawing ever since she could wield a pencil. But while she started scribbling before she could walk, her professional career as an artist began slightly later…
Buy books on Amazon
It was upon her graduation from Arizona State University, with a BFA in Drawing, that Molly accepted an offer to work for DreamWorks Feature Animation Studios. After five years, a number of film credits, and an incredibly good time, she left the studio and leapt with gusto into the world of children's book illustration!
Molly now lives in Arizona with her brilliant husband, two wonderfully mischievous sons, and two snugly cats. When not making mischief with her boys or watching old Technicolor musicals, she can be found at her desk scribbling away, with a pencil in -
Mac Barnett
Born to non-farmers in a California farming community, Mac Barnett now lives near San Francisco. He's on the board of directors of 826LA, a nonprofit writing center for students in Los Angeles, and he founded the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, a convenience store for time travelers.
Buy books on Amazon -
Pam Adams
Pam Adams (1919-2010) was a British children's book author and illustrator, and a graphic designer. Born in Swindon in 1919, she was educated at the Swindon Art College and at the Central School of Art in London, and worked for many years as a graphic designer in the advertising field. In the 1970s she returned to Swindon, and teamed up with Michael Twinn, who had recently founded the publishing house Child’s Play. Her first children's book, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly, was published in 1972, and remains a bestseller for the publishing house. After writing and illustrating countless other picture-books, Adams died in 2010, at the age of 91.
Buy books on Amazon -
Katie May Green
Katie May Green studied art history at Bristol University and children’s book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. She lives in England.
Buy books on Amazon -
Rafe Martin
Rafe Martin is an award-winning author and storyteller, as well as a lay Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani koan line. He is founding teacher of Endless Path Zendo, Rochester, NY.
Buy books on Amazon
He is the recipient of the prestigious Empire State Award for the body of his work, as well as multiple American Library Association Notable Book Awards and Parent's Choice Gold Awards. He has been featured at such storytelling events as the Joseph Campbell Festival of Myth and Story, The Sierra Storytelling Festival, and the National Storytelling Festival. He is the father of two grown children and lives with his wife, Rose, in Rochester, NY. -
Rubin Pingk
As a child, Rubin Pingk ran away from the circus to join a normal family that never did anything or went anywhere, ever. It was in this uneventful and stable environment that Rubin became a champion yawner, world-class doodler, and distinguished spinner of yarn. Today Rubin Pingk is an author/illustrator living in Clinton, Utah, with his wife, two rowdy boys, a peckish pug, and a scheming cat.
Buy books on Amazon