About Jessica

Jessica Lawson enjoys living in Pennsylvania, where she and her family spend weekend hours hanging at the local orchard, pretending to be on cooking shows, building with magnet blocks and Legos, making up new holidays, and reading plenty of books. She likes pizza. A lot.

She is the author of The Actual & Truthful Adventures of Becky Thatcher, a book that Publishers Weekly called “a delightfully clever debut” in a starred review, and Nooks & Crannies, a Junior Library Guild Selection and recipient of three starred reviews. Her 3rd book, Waiting for Augusta, won the Colorado Book Award for Juvenile Fiction, and was also a Junior Library Guild Selection. Of her 4th book, Under the Bottle Bridge, School Library Journal has this to say: "Beautifully written, with vivid characters, this exploration of family and friendship shines from the first page." Booklist called her latest middle grade novel, How to Save a Queendom, a "wonderfully enchanting adventure."

She fell in love with storytelling at an early age, and is a sucker for Arnold Lobel, Maurice Sendak, Barbara Cooney, Tomie dePaola, Jane Austen, Linda Sue Park, RL LaFevers, Tracey Baptiste, Karen Cushman, Rita Williams-Garcia, Barbara Park, Amy Tan, Maryrose Wood, Anne Ursu, Christopher Paul Curtis, Gail Carson Levine, Isabel Allende, Sharon Creech, Eva Ibbotson, Shannon Hale, Maeve Binchy and many, many, many other wonderful authors and illustrators.

She writes fiction for young readers, lots of to-do lists, and songs about lost socks.