Joanna Ho Books in Order

If you want her signature picture books about identity: Eyes That Kiss in the Corners → Eyes That Speak to the Stars → Eyes That Weave the World's Wonders
If you like true stories about art and connection: Playing at the Border
If you want warm family read-alouds: One Day → Say My Name
If you want a classroom story about books and empathy: The Day the Books Disappeared
If you want her YA novel first: The Silence That Binds Us

Joanna Ho grew up with more than one map in her head. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to immigrants from Taiwan and China, and later lived in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Accra, Taipei, and the Bay Area. That mix of places, languages, and expectations helps explain why so many of her books care about belonging, family, and the stories people carry inside them.

Long before her first book was published, Ho was working in schools. She earned a BA in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute. Over the years she taught English, served as a dean and high school vice principal, designed an alternative-to-prison program, and created professional development for educators.

Writing came later.

She has said that becoming a mother changed how she thought about books. While looking for holiday stories and picture books with diverse characters for her newborn, she kept running into the same gap: there were not enough books that looked like the families she knew. So she started writing the kinds of stories she wanted her own children to find on the shelf.

Her debut, Eyes That Kiss in the Corners, arrived in 2021 and quickly found a wide audience. In it, a young Taiwanese girl notices that her eyes look different from her classmates' and then learns to see beauty, history, and strength in the eyes she shares with her family. Readers connected with its calm confidence, and the book became a New York Times bestseller.

Ho kept building from there. Eyes That Speak to the Stars gives a similar affirmation to a young boy, while Eyes That Weave the World's Wonders opens up questions of adoption, family, and identity. In Say My Name, she celebrates the histories carried inside names and the respect involved in learning to say them right.

She doesn't stay in one lane for long.

In Playing at the Border: A Story of Yo-Yo Ma, Ho turns to music, migration, and the idea that art can bridge real borders. One Day is a tender promise from a mother to her son. The Day the Books Disappeared uses a funny classroom mishap to talk about empathy and the freedom to read. Then The Silence That Binds Us, her young adult debut, takes on grief, mental health, racism, and class through the story of Maybelline Chen after her brother's death by suicide.

The range of subjects is broad, but the thread is easy to see. Ho writes about kids and families trying to name who they are, especially when the world would rather flatten them into a stereotype or rush past their story. Her books have earned major recognition, including an Asian/Pacific American Award honor, a Golden Kite Award, an Ezra Jack Keats Honor, and finalist notices for the Kirkus Prize.

She lives in the Bay Area with her three children and still works at the overlap of education and storytelling. On her author bio, she says she survives on homemade chocolate chip cookies, outdoor adventures, and dance parties with her kids, which feels pretty on brand for books that are thoughtful, warm, and ready to meet young readers where they are.