Dear Readers, Parents, Educators and Librarians,

My children’s books have been launched Into space, won five national STEM book awards, and are read around the world. I love to write about STEM and also about kids’ funny adventures at school and in life.

I grew up in Philadelphia, where I spent countless hours reading and volunteering in the Free Library of Philadelphia. My favorite childhood book was E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. To this day it inspires me, since the character of Charlotte is a writer like I am—though she writes words in her spider web and I write them on my computer. She uses the words in her web to save the life of a friend, and that tells me that words are very powerful.

At Cornell University I first started learning about the environment. 

I discovered my deep love for the ocean on many trips with my husband and children to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which led me to write several ocean books including the 2024 Penguins Ready to Go, Go, Go!, since Emperor penguins spend their lives in the polar ocean as well on the Antarctic sea ice.

I read as much as I can especially about animals, science, history, and people around the world. I love to swim, walk in beautiful parts of nature, discover new birds, and visit the ocean which has inspired my books in so many ways.

My book ideas come from the natural world, science, my childhood, my kids’ childhoods, photos, and sometimes even just cool facts that catch my eye—like astronauts orbiting through space at 17,500 miles per hour, or Emperor penguins sledding on their bellies across the ice.

I have also created groundbreaking STEM apps and exhibits for UC Berkeley’s renowned Lawrence Hall of Science, and am a writer and editor for the American Society for Engineering Education. After many years in Walnut Creek, CA I now live in Silver Spring, MD.

Teachers tell Deborah, “You are the BEST author assembly we ever had!” Her books include:

California Reading Association interview with Deborah

ASTRONAUTS ZOOM! rocketed to the International Space Station for Story Time From Space! The book orbited 57 million miles and is a readaloud video from by astronaut Koichi Wakata. The book launches kids into a day (and night) in the life of women and men on the space station—from A to Z. How do they work and live in orbit? Do they have fun? Do they miss Earth?

PENGUINS READY TO GO, GO, GO! (April 2024)—with many photos being published for the first time in a children’s book—takes young readers to Emperor penguins’ frozen world on the Antarctic sea ice and in the polar ocean. How do they survive in Earth’s harshest climate? What is the science behind their secrets of survival? How do they use teamwork? How is climate change now threatening their species? What can we do to protect them?

SCIENTISTS GET DRESSED won the national DeBary Award for Outstanding Children’s Science Books, spotlighting men and women scientists at work on volcanoes, glaciers, and beaches, in space, operating rooms, labs and more. How do scientists get dressed for amazing work they do and the places they do it?

Beauty and the Beak: How Science, Technology, and a 3D-Printed Beak Rescued a Bald Eagle, coauthored with raptor biologist Janie Veltkamp, won the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books, Bank Street College Cook Prize for Best STEM Picture Book, and Eureka! Gold Award for Nonfiction from the California Reading Association.

Swoop and Soar: How Science Rescued Two Osprey Orphans and Found Them A New Family in the Wild, coauthored with raptor biologist Janie Veltkamp, won the national DeBary Award for Outstanding Children’s Science Books and the Eureka! Silver Award for Nonfiction.

Deborah also wrote Jimmy the Joey, The Twelve Days of Kindergarten and The Twelve Days of Winter, Ocean Babies, and The People Who Hugged the Trees. Into the A, B, Sea has sold more than a quarter million copies.