Pleasant DeSpain

Pleasant DeSpain is a world traveler, storyteller and author of 18 published books,and more than 350 stories. He's currently living in Northern Thailand as well as the USA, while working on a collection of stories from his 70 plus years of life and adventures. The goal of the new work is to share his practical as well as spiritual journey. Pleasant does not have answers or truths for others, but he has many good stories to tell!

His many collections of folk and fairy tales, legends and original tales, most of which are published by August House Publishers, Atlanta, Georgia, continue to be in circulation and used in schools throughout the United States and other countries. These stories endure and will always be relevant in our various cultu

If you like author Pleasant DeSpain here is the list of authors you may also like

Buy books on Amazon

Total similar authors (26)

Margaret Read MacDonald

Follow
Biography
Dr. Margaret Read MacDonald travels the world telling stories....always on the lookout for more great folktales to share. She shapes these found stories into tellable tales which anyone can share with ease. Filling her folktale collections with these delightful tales, she creates perfect read alouds for you and your family. MRM wants everyone to experience the joy of a beautifully told tale. She hopes you will read them a few times...then put down the book...put down the electronic device...and just TELL the story to your children!

Some of her favorite folktales she expands into picture books...hopefully with delightfully readable language while will roll right out of your mouth. Share them with your children and then....act
Buy books on Amazon
Kate Albus

Kate Albus grew up in New York but now lives in rural Maryland with her husband and children. She loves reading, baking, knitting, hiking, and other activities that are inherently quiet.
Buy books on Amazon
Craig Smith

Author and musician Craig Smith was born in Clyde, central Otago, in 1972. Shortly after, the family moved to Queenstown where he, his mother and five brothers and sisters grew up. He now lives in Christchurch.

As a child Craig remembers telling his mother, 'When I grow up, I'm going to become a musician.' Her answer was 'You can't do both!' and she was right. When writing songs for the adult arena, Craig couldn't escape his childish side and was soon writing songs for non-grown-ups.

In late 2007 he released his first kids’ album, Not Just for Kids. The first track from this album, 'Wonky Donkey', won the APRA New Zealand Children’s Song of the Year 2008. He turned this song into his first children’s book by teaming up with illustrator Katz C
Buy books on Amazon
Roz MacLean

Roz MacLean lives on beautiful Vancouver Island where she loves to make art, spend as much time as possible in the forest and near the ocean. While she now writes and illustrates full time, she worked for over a decade supporting students with disabilities and diverse needs in schools. Roz incorporates her passion for inclusion and promoting positive mental health in her books.
Buy books on Amazon
Andrea Wang

Andrea Wang is the award-winning author of Watercress (Caldecott Medal, Newbery Honor, APALA Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, JLG Gold Standard Selection, seven starred reviews), The Nian Monster (APALA Honor), Magic Ramen (Freeman Book Award Honor). Her debut middle grade novel, The Many Meanings of Meilan, was reviewed by the New York Times, has two starred reviews, and is also a JLG Gold Standard Selection. Her work explores culture, creative thinking, and identity. She is also the author of seven nonfiction titles for the library and school market. Andrea holds an M.S. in Environmental Science and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing for Young People. She lives in the Denver area with her family.
Buy books on Amazon
Fernando Vilela

Fernando Vilela nasceu em São Paulo, em 1973. É artista plástico, designer, escritor e ilustrador de livros, além de professor. Autor de 16 livros para crianças e jovens, ilustrou mais de 60 para editoras nacionais e estrangeiras, tendo recebido o Prêmio Jabuti 3 vezes. Como artista plástico, participou de mostras no Brasil e no exterior e seus trabalhos constam de importantes coleções de museus como o MoMA de Nova York, a Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo e o Museu Nacional de Belas Artes do Rio de Janeiro.
Buy books on Amazon
Margaret Read MacDonald

Follow
Biography
Dr. Margaret Read MacDonald travels the world telling stories....always on the lookout for more great folktales to share. She shapes these found stories into tellable tales which anyone can share with ease. Filling her folktale collections with these delightful tales, she creates perfect read alouds for you and your family. MRM wants everyone to experience the joy of a beautifully told tale. She hopes you will read them a few times...then put down the book...put down the electronic device...and just TELL the story to your children!

Some of her favorite folktales she expands into picture books...hopefully with delightfully readable language while will roll right out of your mouth. Share them with your children and then....act
Buy books on Amazon
Shirin Yim Bridges

Shirin Yim Bridges comes from a family of writers and artists. Her first book, Ruby's Wish, was named one of the Best Children's Books of 2002 by Publishers Weekly, and won the Ezra Jack Keats awards for Best Writer and Best Illustrator in 2003. It is on several state reading lists, has been translated into six languages, and is now in its ninth edition.

Shirin's second book, The Umbrella Queen, made TIME/CNN's Top 10 Lists 2008: Best Children's Books, and was also named one of the Best Children's Books of 2008 by the Bank Street College of Education. The Umbrella Queen has been translated into Chinese and Japanese.

Her third book, Mary Wrightly So Politely, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

In addition to being head goose at
Buy books on Amazon
Ann Cleeves

Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...

Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.

While she wa
Buy books on Amazon
Yangsook Choi

Yangsook Choi is the author of the beloved classic THE NAME JAR. Growing up in Korea, she began drawing at age four and delighted in telling her grandmother scary stories at night. After moving to New York to pursue her art, she has written and illustrated many books for young readers.

Her books have been acclaimed as a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, an American Library Association Notable Book, and with an International Literacy Association's Children's Book Award. She has also received 200+ rejection letters until she lost count.

Her past jobs include waiting tables at a smoky Korean BBQ restaurant, flying as a flight attendant, and drawing tiny pictures on fake nails.
Buy books on Amazon
Christopher Denise

Christopher Denise spent much of his childhood in Shannon, Ireland, exploring castles and dreaming of great adventures. He is the illustrator of many critically acclaimed books for young readers, including Anika Denise’s Bunny in the Middle, Alison McGhee’s Firefly Hollow, and Rosemary Wells’s Following Grandfather, as well as several in Brian Jacques’s award-winning Redwall series. His books have appeared on the Indie Next List and the New York Times bestseller list. Knight Owl (march 2022) marks his author-illustrator debut. Christopher’s current adventures include exploring coastal Rhode Island, where he lives with his family.
Buy books on Amazon
Gary Soto

Gary Soto is the author of eleven poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry International, and Poetry, which has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in the interview series Poets in Person. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. For ITVS, he produced the film “The Pool Party,” which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Film Excellence. In 1997, because of his advocacy for reading, he was featured as NBC’s Person-of-t
Buy books on Amazon
Sharon Creech

I was born in South Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and grew up there with my noisy and rowdy family: my parents (Ann and Arvel), my sister (Sandy), and my three brothers (Dennis, Doug and Tom).

For a fictional view of what it was like growing up in my family, see Absolutely Normal Chaos. (In that book, the brothers even have the same names as my own brothers.) Our house was not only full of us Creeches, but also full of friends and visiting relatives.

In the summer, we usually took a trip, all of us piled in a car and heading out to Wisconsin or Michigan or, once, to Idaho. We must have been a very noisy bunch, and I'm not sure how our parents put up with being cooped up with us in the car for those trips. The five-day trip out to Ida
Buy books on Amazon
Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959. A nomadic childhood was spent in towns in Northern England and Scotland. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and has worked in various areas of non-fiction publishing, including Gordon Fraser and Quarto. In 1990, she left London and went to Turin to teach English to stressed-out executives of the Fiat motor company. The following year she taught English in Bilbao.

She returned to England in 1992 and spent the rest of that year in County Durham, in a house that looked out over the North Sea. There she began working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

From 1993 to 2003, Susanna Clarke was an editor at Simon and Schuster's Cambridge office, where she worked on their cooke
Buy books on Amazon
Tomie dePaola

Tomie dePaola (pronounced Tommy da-POW-la) was best known for his books for children.

He had a five-decade writing and illustrating career during which he published more than 270 books, including 26 Fairmount Avenue, Strega Nona, and Meet the Barkers.

Tomie dePaola and his work have been recognized with the Caldecott Honor Award, the Newbery Honor Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and the New Hampshire Governor's Arts Award of Living Treasure.
Buy books on Amazon
Sophie Kinsella

Sophie Kinsella has sold over 40 million copies of her books in more than 60 countries, and she has been translated into over 40 languages.

Sophie Kinsella first hit the UK bestseller lists in September 2000 with her first novel in the Shopaholic series – The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (also published as Confessions of a Shopaholic). The book’s heroine, Becky Bloomwood – a fun and feisty financial journalist who loves shopping but is hopeless with money – captured the hearts of readers worldwide. Becky has since featured in seven further bestselling books, Shopaholic Abroad (also published as Shopaholic Takes Manhattan), Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Shopaholic & Sister, Shopaholic & Baby, Mini Shopaholic, Shopaholic to the Stars and Shop
Buy books on Amazon
Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011 and the National Humanities Medal. After winning for The Lacuna in 2010 and Demon Copperh
Buy books on Amazon
Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a ne
Buy books on Amazon
Alice B. McGinty

Alice Blumenthal McGinty is an American writer of children's books.
McGinty was born in 1963 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She attended Indiana University and the University of Illinois. McGinty is Jewish. She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
Buy books on Amazon
Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer, well-known for outdoor and mountain-climbing writing.

https://www.facebook.com/jonkrakauer
Buy books on Amazon
Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes is an American writer and illustrator of children's books. As an illustrator he won the Caldecott Medal for Kitten's First Full Moon (2004). Two of his books were Newbery Medal Honor Books, Olive's Ocean in 2004 and The Year of Billy Miller in 2014. His picture book Waiting was named both a 2016 Caldecott Honor Book and a Geisel Honor Book. It was only the second time any author has won that combination of awards.
Buy books on Amazon
Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.
Buy books on Amazon
Monica Brown

Monica Brown, Ph.D. is the author of awardwinning bilingual books for children, including My Name Is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz/Me llamo Celia: La vida de Celia Cruz (Luna Rising), a recipient of the Américas Award for Children's Literature and a Pura Belpré Honor. Her second picture book, My Name Is Gabriela: The Life of Gabriela Mistral/Me llamo Gabriela: La vida de Gabriela Mistral (Luna Rising) shares the story of the first Latina to win a Nobel Prize.

Monica's books are inspired by her Peruvian-American heritage and desire to share Latino/a stories with children. "I write from a place of deep passion, joy, and commitment to producing the highest possible quality of literature for children. In my biographies, the lives of my subjects
Buy books on Amazon
Alison Lester

Has a son Lachie Hume, who is also a published children's book author.
Buy books on Amazon
Marjorie Priceman

Marjorie A. Priceman is an American writer or illustrator of more than 30 children's picture books including two Caldecott Honor Books (runners-up for the Caldecott Medal). Her first picture book, Friend or Frog, was published in 1989, soon after her graduation from the Rhode Island School of Design.[citation needed] Priceman's books are known for their bright watercolors, free-flowing lines and whimsical spirit. Her illustrations to When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street (1997) by Elsa Okon Rael have been described as "religiously authentic and playful at the same time".

One of her most popular books is Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, which she illustrated. She lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Buy books on Amazon
Fernando Vilela

Fernando Vilela nasceu em São Paulo, em 1973. É artista plástico, designer, escritor e ilustrador de livros, além de professor. Autor de 16 livros para crianças e jovens, ilustrou mais de 60 para editoras nacionais e estrangeiras, tendo recebido o Prêmio Jabuti 3 vezes. Como artista plástico, participou de mostras no Brasil e no exterior e seus trabalhos constam de importantes coleções de museus como o MoMA de Nova York, a Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo e o Museu Nacional de Belas Artes do Rio de Janeiro.
Buy books on Amazon