Virginia Hamilton Books In Order

Publication Order of Cousins Books

Publication Order of Dies Drear Chronicles Books

Publication Order of Justice and Her Brothers Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Harper Trophy Books

Publication Order of Jerry Pinkney as Illustrator Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Virginia Hamilton is a bestselling and award-winning young adult and children’s fiction author.

The author was born in 1934, just on the edge of the Great Depression. She was born to Kenneth James and Eta Belle Hamilton and spent most of her childhood in Yellow Springs Ohio, as part of a large extended family.

Her mother’s family had lived in the southwestern Ohio farmlands for years starting in the 1850s. Levi Pery her grandfather had come to the state as a child through the Underground Railroad.

As a child, her parents encouraged her to write and read widely and this is perhaps the root of her love for storytelling. Virginia managed to snag a full scholarship when she was top of her high school class and was called to attend Antioch College.

In 1956, she decided to transfer to the Columbus-based Ohio State University and studied creative writing and literature.

Upon graduating, Virginia Hamilton moved to New York City where she worked all manner of jobs. Among her odd jobs included nightclub singer, cost accountant, and museum receptionist.

But all this time she never let go of the dream of becoming a published author. Virginia would later on go to the New School for Social Research, where she studied fiction writing under one of the founders of Atheneum Press – Hiram Haydn.

It was in New York that she met Arnold Adoff the poet whom she married in 1960. Her husband was a teacher and even though they got married, she spent most of her time writing until she got her children.

In 1969, Arnold and Virginia built their home in Yellow Springs on a few acres of the old Perry Hamilton ranch and embarked on a journey of achievement and serious literary work.

During her lifetime, the author published more than forty works across different genres that included biographies, picture books, realistic novels, folktales, science fiction, and mysteries.

Woven into her novels is a deep concern for generational legacy, tradition, and memory, particularly as they defined the lives of Black Americans. Virginia Hamilton used to describe her work as Liberation Literature.

Over the years, Virginia Hamilton won many awards including the highest honor on the international level bestowed on an author of children’s fiction and illustrator in the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing.

She is also the winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and the Regina Medal by the Catholic Library Association. The organization gives the award to authors who have distinguished themselves in writing children’s fiction.

Hamilton made history in 1995 when she was the first children’s fiction author to win a MacArthur Fellowship. Apart from the Newberry Medal and the National Book Award that she won in 1975, she is also the winner of the Boston Globe, Coretta Scott King, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award.

She made her last public appearance when she was awarded a lifetime achievement de Grunmmond Medal by The University of Southern Mississippi. She would continue to lecture, travel, and write while living in New York City until she died in 2002, soon after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Virginia Hamilton posthumously published three more novels after her death.

“Justice and Her Brothers” by Virginia Hamilton is the story of identical twins Levi and Thomas and their young sibling Justice. Justice is increasingly becoming aware of how different yet similar her brothers are.

She has also been growing awareness of her own powers that connect her to other people in her world. The work is something of a children’s work written for adults as the author makes very sophisticated references that he intersperses with childlike stuff.

For instance, there is a fantasy parapsychological element that is interspersed with things such as riding down treacherous hills on a bike, a snake collecting contest, and how to cope when parents are not at home because of school or work.

One of the brothers turns out to be a full-blown psychopath which is unnerving at times. You sometimes get a feeling that he may just do some terrible things He ends up doing some awful things even though that felt like a taste of things to come.

Ending on a cliffhanger it is a confusing and weird book that will make its readers look forward to reading what comes next.

Virginia Hamilton’s novel “Dustland” tells the story of Dorian, Justice, Levi, and Thomas who together are an intertime and psychic interstellar group that refers to themselves as “The Unit.”

They have to become “The Unit” if they are to traverse time and space because they would be captured by the “t-beings” if they do not. Upon landing in “Dustland,” which is a place full of dust just as its name implies, they learn that this would be earth’s future.
Wandering around, Thomas is frustrated as Justice is becoming very controlling. Justice has become a being known as “The Watcher,” who is full of some dark energy.

The children soon encounter all manner of bizarre creatures that have telepathic powers but speak American English from the 1980s.
“The Unit” is held together by their paranormal sensory powers as they seek different ways to get out of a dark and very barren world full of all manner of dangers. They are soon torn apart by jealousy and getting back to the Earth and the present becomes an even more difficult challenge.

“The Gathering” by Virginia Hamilton the siblings are back in Dustland, hoping to save their semi-human, half lion, half dog, and semi-human flying dinosaur creature Mal.

But there is dark energy interested in keeping them stuck in Duastland and Mal their telepathic friend seems to have figured this out. He now intends to help them get out of Dustland.

They finally escape and get to a nicer place known as Sona, where they are met by Celestor.

The latter is some kind of cyborg who is living in Sona with a giant creating machine that is responsible for the birth of several spaceships and machines alongside a giant computer machine that is telepathic.

The most bizarre creature is “The Watcher,” which comes from Justice but is a completely separate entity that has been living in her brain ever since she was a child.