Barbara Park

Barbara Park (21 April 1947 to 15 November 2013) was an American children's author, born Barbara Lynne Tidswell in Mount Holly, New Jersey, who created the Junie B. Jones chapter-book series.

Alfred A. Knopf published her first book, Don't Make Me Smile, in 1981, and both Skinnybones and Operation: Dump the Chump in 1982. Through the 1980s she wrote a run of comic middle-grade novels, among them Buddies (1985), which won the Texas Bluebonnet Award that year, Almost Starring Skinnybones (1988) and My Mother Got Married (and Other Disasters) (1989). In 1992 Random House launched Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus in its First Stepping Stones line, with pictures by Denise Brunkus. The series grew to 31 books between 1992 and 2013, 28 stories and three activity books, closing with Turkeys We Have Loved and Eaten in 2012. Park also wrote Mick Harte Was Here (1995), which she considered her favourite of her own books, and The Graduation of Jake Moon (2000). She died of ovarian cancer in Scottsdale, Arizona.

For collectors

The book to look for is the 1992 Random House first of Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus, which launched the series. Her early Knopf novels, Don't Make Me Smile (1981) and Skinnybones (1982), are the first editions from the start of her career.