Barbara Wersba (August 19, 1932

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

- February 18, 2018

Englewood, New Jersey Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from por ...

) was an American youth and children's book author.

Life

Barbara Wersba grew up in California and later in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, where she attended a private school and attended theater workshops. She studied at Bard College. After graduation, she returned to Greenwich Village and took acting lessons with Paul Mann. After several years at the theater, she began writing in the 1960s. She is the author of thirty children's and teen books. ''The Dream Watcher'' was first published in 1968. In 1973, she won the

Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis The (German Youth Literature Award) is an annual award established in 1956 by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth to recognise outstanding works of children's and young adult literature. It is Germany's only ...

(German Children's Literature Award) for ''Run softly, go fast'', and in 1985, she was nominated for the award for ''The carnival in my mind''. In 1977 she was nominated for the prestigious

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

for ''

Tunes for a Small Harmonica ''Tunes for a Small Harmonica'' is a novel by Barbara Wersba about an adolescent tomboy named J.F. McAllister. It was originally published by Dell Publishing but was then reprinted by Harper and Row publishing. It was a finalist for the 1977 N ...

''. In addition, Wersba worked for many years as an author for the ''New York Times Review of Books''. In 1994, she founded her own, small publishing house with The Bookman Press. She is best known for her work for young adolescents. At the center of her novels are often sensitive, often artistically gifted young people who feel misunderstood in their family environment, and find encouragement and self-affirmation in friendships with more unconventional, sometimes significantly older people.

Works

* ''Tunes for a small harmonica'' New York, N.Y. : Harper & Row, 1976. , * ''The crystal child'', New York, N.Y. : Harper & Row, 1982. , * ''Crazy vanilla'', London : Pan Books, 1988. , * ''Let me fall before I fly'', Sag Harbor, N.Y. : Bookman Press, 2001. * ''The dream watcher'', New York: Atheneum, 1968; Asheville, N.C. : Front Street, 2007. ,

References

External links

* https://canios.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/remembering-barbara-wersba/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Wersba, Barbara 1932 births 2018 deaths American writers Writers from Chicago