When I was growing up, my father named our house-spiders Sam, Herman, and Henry and told us their detailed family histories so that we, his five children, would not be inclined to stomp on them! There were many occasions when he stopped the car to give an assist to slow-moving toads and turtles trying to make their way across the highway. Like our spiders, they too had homes and families. We also had Vertigo, an old palomino parade horse, and Charlie, a Labrador retriever.
Here I am, at 4, with a family friend)
We lived in California’s Mojave Desert. There were few houses and no fences, so our yard played host to many desert animals. Two large tortoises lumbered around our cactus garden. Roadrunners and jackrabbits zipped into, then out of the yard. There were legions of lizards and herds of horned toads, not to mention snakes and tarantulas.
I loved to draw as a child and was encouraged by both my parents. My mother, a first-grade teacher, enlisted me to create drawings for her classrooms and to help with art projects. My "career" as her classroom artist greatly contributed to my goal of becoming an illustrator. I was kept well stocked with art supplies, and when my father's career as an Air Force pilot took our family to Taiwan for two years, my parents arranged for me to study with a Chinese brush-painting master.
(My father with a desert tortoise)
My illustrations are populated by as wide a variety of animals as my youth was. The animals in my books have human characteristics. They have families to go home to. I attribute this to my animal-filled childhood and to my kind and imaginative father.
My inspiration also comes from my childhood reading list, which included Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, The Wind in the Willows, Stuart Little, Doctor Dolittle, Charlotte's Web and the works of Dr. Seuss, among many others.
When I got older, I studied art in college. My mother worked with my favorite drawing teacher to encourage me to move to New York City (a forbidding place to someone from the deserts of California) where I could continue my studies at The Art Students League. It was in the stacks of the Children’s Branch of the New York Public Library that I discovered my love of children's books and calling as an illustrator.
Children's books address universal themes: love, friendship, jealousy, joy, sadness ---either in profound and poetic, or hilariously wacky ways. As an artist I am able to give my own voice to these themes by playing off the words and building on them from page to page. I love being able to integrate my artistic training with themes that have occupied me since childhood.
In HOPTOAD (written by Jane Yolen), you will find my father and brother with our family dog, Charlie, traveling in our old truck through the Mojave Desert. Can you guess what they do when they cross paths with a toad in the road? HOPTOAD was a Junior Library selection. It was also presented with a KIND award by the Humane Society (one of my proudest achievments!)
My first authored book, CARL'S NOSE, grew from my husband Carl's obsession with the Weather Channel, and evolved to feature the nose of our family dog, Elvis, who once led my sister and I out of the Montana wilderness. My own dog, DannyBoy, modeled for the nose.
After almost three decades in New York City, I have moved to Seattle, Washington. Here I live in a quiet neighborhood with my husband, Carl, and our Sweet
Danny-Boy, a Labrador Retriever.
An occasional spider
(Sweet Danny-Boy) moves in to enjoy our warm house during wet Seattle winters.
Most days I am in my studio, where I am at work on a book about some very silly chickens.
