Victoria Jamieson Books in Order

Victoria Jamieson grew up in Havertown, Pennsylvania, and she has said that she wrote and illustrated her first book in third grade. When she was twelve, her family moved to Florida, a change that stayed with her. Years later, that mix of old friendships, awkward transitions, and starting over would feed directly into her stories about middle school.

Art was there early. Her mother was an art teacher, and Jamieson has described a childhood full of paints, fabric, and homemade projects. For a while she imagined a future in animation, which led her to the Rhode Island School of Design to study illustration.

School pointed her in one direction, and real life nudged her into another.

After RISD, she took a winding path through a few unusual jobs, including portrait work on a cruise ship, and eventually landed in New York as a children's book designer at HarperCollins. She was learning how books are put together from the inside while also making her own work on the side. That mix of steady design work and personal drawing helped turn her from an illustrator with ideas into an author-illustrator.

Her early books were picture books, including Bea Rocks the Flock, Olympig!, and Pest in Show. They are bright, funny, and a little odd in the best way, full of animals who do not quite fit the mold. That thread, characters learning how to be themselves without sanding off their quirks, never really leaves her work.

Then came Roller Girl, her first full graphic novel, and the book that brought her to a much wider group of readers. Jamieson had played roller derby with the Rose City Rollers in Portland, Oregon, so the book's world came from experience as much as imagination. Astrid's summer of derby camp, shifting friendships, and hard-earned confidence struck a nerve with young readers, and the book went on to receive a Newbery Honor.

She often starts with something close to home.

All's Faire in Middle School grew from Jamieson's time at the Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Florida when she was in high school. Like Roller Girl, it looks closely at embarrassment, belonging, and the strange social math of being young. Her shorter Pets on the Loose books aim at younger readers, but they still carry her usual mix of warmth, visual comedy, and characters trying to figure out where they fit.

With When Stars Are Scattered, created with Omar Mohamed, Jamieson moved into nonfiction graphic storytelling. The book tells Omar's life story growing up in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya, with his younger brother Hassan. Readers often connect with the way it balances very hard circumstances with humor, tenderness, routine, and hope, and it became a National Book Award finalist.

Across her books, you can see what she returns to again and again: kids finding a place, friendships that shift, families that are loving and imperfect, and communities that can be both comforting and complicated. She writes for younger readers without talking down to them, and her drawings help make big feelings feel clear. Jamieson now lives in Pennsylvania with her family, and the details of her life keep resurfacing in her work, a best friend left behind, a Renaissance faire, a roller derby league, even childhood hamsters, changed into stories that feel funny, open, and very human.