Al Capone Does My Shirts

Al Capone Does My Shirts is a historical novel for young readers by the American writer Gennifer Choldenko, published in 2004. It was named a Newbery Honor book and received the California Young Reader Medal in 2007.

The Flanagans move from Santa Monica to Alcatraz in 1935 because Moose's father has taken work at the prison, and the guards' families live on the island among the men whose names fill the newspapers. Moose is twelve and finds the place both exciting and impossible: there is a boat to catch for school, a warden's daughter who trades on her father's authority, and rules about where a child may and may not go. At the same time he is the one who understands his sister Natalie, who is fascinated by numbers and cannot manage the school he is expected to send her to, and the book follows his attempts to get her the help the family cannot afford or find.

The story uses the real prison island as its setting and keeps the historical details of the period in the background, and it was followed by three further novels about the same family.