Virginia "Ginger" Wadsworth is an American writer of biographies, Western American history, science, and natural history for young readers. She is the author of more than 25 award-winning books.
Early life
Virginia Leland Evarts was born in San Diego to Dorothea Abbott Evarts, an artist and teacher, and Hal G. Evarts, Jr., an author of many western books, stories for the Saturday Evening Post, biographies, and adventure titles for young readers. Her maternal grandfather, Clinton Gilbert Abbott, was the director of the San Diego Natural History Museum and her paternal grandfather, Hal G. Evarts, was an author of western novels in the 1920s and 1930s. She and her two younger brothers camped with their family in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, explored Baja California, and traveled throughout the Western United States while their father conducted research for his writing. She spent three summers on a ranch and made a six-week bicycle trip from San Diego to Canada with her Girl Scout troop. Wadsworth graduated from La Jolla High School, and attended the University of California Davis where she graduated with an English degree and minor in Western American History.
Personal life
In 1967, she married Bill Wadsworth. They have two sons and three grandchildren. Wadsworth and her husband live in the San Francisco East Bay area and also spend time in Borrego Springs. Wadsworth takes her trained therapy dogs into libraries and schools where children read to the dogs in Paws to Read programs. She and her dogs are affiliated with Tony La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation and they also visit Alzheimer respite care facilities. She serves on the Friends of the Libraryboard of directors.
Career
Wadsworth started writing journals and short stories at a young age. When her children were in elementary school, she began submitting articles to magazines, including Cobblestone, and had many articles published. Some of her biographies were expansions of those published articles. Her first published book was a 1990 biography of Julia Morgan, a California architect and first woman to win the American Institute of Architects' AIA Gold Medal. John Muir, Rachel Carson, John Burroughs, and Laura Ingalls Wilder were among her early biography subjects. She wrote about Susan Butcher and her dogs who won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska four times. She then wrote a series about animal habitats and another about animal homes. More biographies followed, including ones about Annie Oakley, Benjamin Banneker, Cesar Chavez, and the Wright Brothers. Wadsworth's more recent books include the true story of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt camping together in Yosemite in 1903, a biography of Juliette Gordon Low the founder of Girl Scouts of the USA, plus a picture book about a pair of Yosemite Valley coyotes separated by a rockfall and ultimately reunited.
