Beantown Pals, The Adventures of Bucky and Betty with Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott is a prolific children's book author. He has graciously agreed to visit us in Beantown to speak about his works and give advice to young writers.

When he began reading bedtime stories to his children, the spark of writing he had had for so many years finally turned to children’s books. After many failures, his first published book, Danger Guys, was written while taking a writing class with renowned children’s author, Patricia Reilly Giff.

DSC03371Since then Tony has written over ninety-five books for readers ages 6 to 14, including many series (The Secret of Droon, The Haunting of Derek Stone, Underworlds, Goofballs, to name a few) and novels for older readers, including Kringle, Firegirl, The Postcard, and Lunch-Box Dream. His publishers include HarperCollins, Hyperion, Scholastic, Random House, Little, Brown, Egmont, and Farrar Straus Giroux.

Over 12 million of Tony’s books have been sold worldwide, and his series and novels have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Chinese, and Russian. Several of his books were named Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club selections and Junior Library Guild selections and have appeared on state reading lists, including the Texas Bluebonnet list, and the Great Lakes Great Award Master List, and Choose to Read Ohio.

Firegirl won the Golden Kite Award for Fiction presented by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

In the spring of 2009, The Postcard was honored with the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery in the juvenile category.

He is currently a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Yale Center for British Art, and other esteemed arts organizations.