Barry Denenberg

Barry Denenberg is an American author of historical fiction and nonfiction for young readers, known for his diaries in Scholastic's Dear America and My Name Is America series.

His early books were biographies, beginning with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America's 35th President (1988) and continuing with lives of Muhammad Ali (1989), Jackie Robinson (1990) and J. Edgar Hoover (1992); later nonfiction ranged from Nelson Mandela and Anne Frank to Elvis Presley, the subject of All Shook Up (2001). Voices from Vietnam (1995) and An American Hero: The True Story of Charles A. Lindbergh (1996) were both ALA Best Books for Young Adults. For Dear America he wrote When Will This Cruel War Be Over? (1996), So Far From Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl (1997) and, as his third diary, One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping (2000), and he also wrote Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows (2001). The Journal of William Thomas Emerson (1998) was one of the first two My Name Is America books, and The Journal of Ben Uchida (1999) followed. He also wrote for the Royal Diaries series, including a diary of Elisabeth of Austria. Many of his historical novels were named NCSS/CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People. He lives in Westchester County, New York.

For collectors

Denenberg is collected chiefly by readers of the Dear America series. First printings of When Will This Cruel War Be Over? (1996) and So Far From Home (1997), from the series' early years, are the titles most worth seeking out.