Jenna Bush Hager Books in Order

Jenna Bush Hager was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1981, one minute after her fraternal twin sister, Barbara. The family later moved to Austin when their father became governor of Texas, so her childhood mixed ordinary school days with a life increasingly watched by the public.

She studied English at the University of Texas at Austin and began her working life in classrooms, teaching third grade in Washington, D.C. That experience stuck with her. Reading, schools, and the small breakthroughs that happen when a child connects with a book would keep showing up in her work.

A 2006 internship with UNICEF in Latin America gave her a different kind of education. After visiting communities in the region, including drought-stricken Paraguay, she helped tell the story that became Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope, about a young mother living with HIV. It was a serious beginning for a writer whose books would often return to empathy, family, and the ways people help one another through hard days.

Her next books took a lighter route. With her mother, Laura Bush, she wrote the picture books Read All About It! and Our Great Big Backyard. One brings a reluctant young reader into a classroom adventure, while the other follows a family road trip through national parks. Both make room for curiosity, imagination, and the pleasures of putting down a screen or picking up a book.

In 2009, Hager joined NBC's Today as a correspondent. She later became a co-host of the program's fourth hour and founded the Read With Jenna book club, where she shares a new reading pick with viewers. It fits neatly with the rest of her career. She talks about books the way an enthusiastic friend might, with room for both big feelings and a good plot.

Her partnership with Barbara is another steady thread. The sisters wrote the memoir Sisters First, looking back on their childhood in Texas, years in the White House, and the bond that helped them handle a very public life. They also turned that theme into picture books, including Sisters First, The Superpower Sisterhood, Love Comes First, and I Loved You First.

Family memories take center stage in Everything Beautiful in Its Time. In that essay collection, Hager writes about the four grandparents who helped shape her, including George and Barbara Bush and Harold and Jenna Welch. The book grew from a year in which she lost three of them, but it is as interested in funny stories, habits, letters, and everyday lessons as it is in grief.

The through line is simple: family matters.

Hager's books move from classrooms and neighborhoods to parks, family homes, and the memories people pass down. Her characters, whether real people or children in picture books, are usually figuring out how to be kinder, braver, more patient, or more open to the world around them.

She lives in New York with her husband, Henry Hager, and their three children. Alongside her television work and writing, she has also built projects around bringing more stories to readers and viewers.