Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Published on Mar 10, 2019
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Susan Campbell Bartoletti
After years of experience working with children as both a teacher and an author, Bartoletti has found that they all have one thing in common: they all hunger for a good, engaging story that is told well. She has written an abundance of novels, nonfiction, and picture books for children and young adults with a focus on historical elements and events.
Susan Campbell Bartoletti was born on November 18, 1958 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Growing up in the Pennsylvania countryside, she enjoyed reading, drawing, riding horses, and playing and listening to music.
Bartoletti discovered her true passion for art and writing in the eighth grade, when she worked as the editor for her school's newspaper. She was so eager to start her career that she graduated from high school a year early. She enrolled at Marywood College as an Art major, but later switched to English and secondary education. In 1979, she graduated from Marywood College with a BA. She immediately started work as an eighth grade English teacher at North Pocono Middle School, where she taught for 18 years.
During her teaching career, Bartoletti was involved in a number of activities, such as: co-advising her school's literary magazine, participating in three distinguished children's literature organizations, earning her MA in English from the University of Scranton, and teaching a children's literature course at a nearby university. Additionally, she started to make more time for personal writing.
In 1998, after publishing her first couple of books, Bartoletti retired from teaching to pursue her writing career full time. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from Binghamton University, where she won the Excellence in Research award for her doctoral dissertation.
In 1994, Bartoletti's first book, Silver at Night, was published. This picture book was an autobiography of her husband's grandfather, who immigrated from Italy and worked in the coal mines for many years.
Bartoletti's second book, Growing Up in Coal Country, was published in 1996. This book gives readers an inside look into into the living and working conditions in Pennsylvania coal towns. It was so well-received that it earned her several awards, such as the Carolyn Field Award, the Lamplighter Award, and the Parents Gold Choice Award.
In 2005, Bartoletti's most well-known book was published, Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow. This book explores the lives of the young Germans that pledged their allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi regime and offers an eye-opening perspective on this period in history. This book became a Newbery Honor Book selection in 2006.
Other titles by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
- Kids on Strike! (focuses on the hardships and dangers of child labor)
- Black Potatoes: The Great Irish Potato Famine 1845-1850
- The Flag Maker (tells the story of a large American flag sewn for the War of 1812)
- The Boy Who Dared (a novel based on a true story about the life of a Hitler youth)
