Susan Campbell Bartoletti's sense of heritage has inspired her literary creations.

Bartoletti was born on November 18, 1958.

Sources do not indicate her birthplace or the names of her parents. In a lesson plan prepared for Scholastic, Bartoletti commented that she had "strong women in my family," noting that her mother was twenty-three when Bartoletti's father died and she raised her toddlers, Bartoletti and her sister, alone. Also, Bartoletti said that one of her grandmothers managed a boardinghouse. Bartoletti dedicated her second picture book, Dancing with Dziadziu, "for Mom and Dad, with love."

She married Joseph Bartoletti when she was eighteen years old. They later had a daughter and son. She loves books and decided to become a teacher. In 1979, Bartoletti earned a bachelor's degree in English and secondary education from Scranton's Marywood College where she also took graduate courses. Settling in nearby Moscow, Pennsylvania, that...