Deborah Hopkinson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. She is the author of approximately 30 children's books, including Hear My Sorrow, the final book in the Dear America series. She has also written Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, winner of the International Reading Association Award, Sky Boys, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book, Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings about Alta Weiss a Jane Addams Children's book honor award winner for 2004, and Shutting Out the Sky, also a Jane Addams Children's Book honor award and an NCTE Orbis Pictus honor book.