About the Authors
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Blue Balliett
    Blue Balliett knew she wanted to be a writer when she was 8 years old.  Growing up in Manhattan, she spent a lot of time wandering through museums, namely the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Museum, both of which housed a few Vermeer paintings. After graduating from Brown University with a degree in art history, Blue worked on Nantucket for a while, working as a cook, waitress, art gallery curator, and of course, writer. However, Blue says that while she “tried to sit down and be a writer at 21,” she had a hard time finding her voice, and that she could not have written Chasing Vermeer “without all the living that preceded it.” Chasing Vermeer went on to win the Book Sense Book of the Year Award, as well as an Edgar Award and an Agatha Award.
 
Mary Jane Begin
      Mary Jane Begin's illustrating career began as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she now teaches illustration.  Her award-winning children's picture book portfolio includes the recent re-release of Kenneth Grahame's classic tale The Wind in the Willows, R is for Rhode Island, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Her work has been featured in Communication Arts magazine and the Society of Illustrators Annual of American Illustration. She is the recipient of many awards, including The Steven Donahos Award and multiple Certificates of Merit from the Society of Illustrators, and multiple Awards of Excellence from Communication Arts.

 Website: http://www.maryjanebegin.com/
 

Mary Downing Hahn
     Mary Downing Hahn usually types four to six versions of every book, and this hard work pays off.  Her books keep you on the edge of your seat.  Her ghost story Wait till Helen Comes was the winner of 12 state children’s book awards. You’ll shiver when you read Time for Andrew.  Mary grew up in College Park, Maryland.  When her two daughters were growing up, Mary was a children’s librarian in Prince George’s Public Library System.  Now, she writes full time. She and her husband and their cat live in Columbia, Maryland.
 
Sy Montgomery
      Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, author, documentary scriptwriter, and radio commentator who writes for children as well as adults. Among her award-winning books are Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, Journey of the Pink Dolphins, and Spell of the Tiger. She has made four trips to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon; and on other expeditions, she was chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire; bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica; undressed by an orangutan in Borneo; and hunted by a tiger in India. She also worked in a pit crawling with eighteen thousand snakes in Manitoba; handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana; and swam with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon. She lives in New Hampshire.

Website: http://www.authorwire.com/
 
Giselle Potter
     Giselle Potter is the author and illustrator of The Year I Didn't Go to School, which is based upon her travels around Italy with her family's theater troupe at age seven. She is also the illustrator of The Brave Little Seamstress and Kate and the Beanstalk, both by Mary Pope Osborne, and The Honest-to-Goodness Truth by Patricia C. McKissack.  Her art frequently appears in The New Yorker, and one of the picture books she illustrated, Gabriella's Song, was an ALA Notable Book. Ms. Potter lives in Rosendale, New York. 

Website: http://altpick.com/members.php?id=17778
 
Helen Recorvits
     Helen Recorvits was born in Rhode Island and graduated from Rhode Island College with a degree in education and psychology.  She went on to earn a Master’s degree and also a certification in gifted and talented education.  A former educator for more than twenty-five years, Helen now devotes her time solely to writing.  Her first novel, Goodbye, Walter Malinski, was chosen as a National Council for Social Studies Notable Trade Book, and her second novel Where Heroes Hide also received many fine reviews.  In 2003, her first picture book, My Name Is Yoon, was published.  Yoon was named to many best book lists, was chosen as an outstanding book of the year by the New York Is Book Country Committee, and was also named an ALA Notable Children’s Book.
 
Peter H. Reynolds
     An incessant doodler since childhood, Peter H. Reynolds credits his unique brand of humor and his love for the absurd to growing up with "very eccentric British parents" who were fond of watching Monty Python. Peter's best selling books include The Dot, Ish, and So Few of Me (Candlewick Press). Peter's latest book, Someday (a collaboration with author Alison McGhee) is a New York Times #1 Best Seller Children's book and has been on the list for 3 months. In addition, the illustrator brings to the Judy Moody series his sensibility as a "very visual person."
      The president and creative director of FableVision Studios in Boston, Dedham, Portland and London, where he produces award-winning children's broadcast programming, educational videos, and multimedia applications, Peter H. Reynolds was recently honored by Verizon as Literacy Leader of the Year. He illustrated this years‚Äô Rhode Island Children's Book Award winner, Stink the Incredible Shrinking Kid. The author-illustrator lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Website: http://www.peterhreynolds.com/
 
Chris Van Allsburg
     Chris Van Allsburg is the winner of two Caldecott Medals, for Jumanji and The Polar Express, as well as the recipient of a Caldecott Honor Book for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. The author and illustrator of numerous picture books for children, he has also been awarded the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. In 1982, Jumanji won the National Book Award and in 1996, it was made into a popular feature film. Chris Van Allsburg was formerly an instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two children.

Website: http://www.chrisvanallsburg.com/flash.html
 
David Wiesner
      David Wiesner is one of the best-loved and most highly acclaimed picture book creators in the world. To date David Wiesner has illustrated more than twenty award-winning books for young readers. Three of the picture books he both wrote and illustrated became instant classics when they won the prestigious Caldecott Medal: Tuesday in 1992, The Three Pigs in 2002 and Flotsam in 2007. Two others, Sector 7 and Free Fall, were named Caldecott Honor Books. An exhibit of Wiesner's original artwork, "Seeing the Story", toured the United States in 2000 and 2001.  David Wiesner lives with his family in the Philadelphia area, where he continues to create dreamlike and inventive images for books.

Website: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/wiesner/home.html
 
Arthur Yorinks  
     Arthur Yorinks has written and directed for opera, theater, dance, and film and is the author of over two dozen acclaimed and award-winning books for children, including the Caldecott Medal winner, Hey, Al. In his three decades of working in the theater, Mr. Yorinks has written and directed numerous plays.  In the field of dance, Mr. Yorinks helped create a full length dance/theater piece with the renowned dance company Pilobolus.  In his books for children, his writings have been hailed as “one of the most distinctive prose styles in children’s literature.” Through his almost thirty years of picture-book making he has collaborated with such famed artists as Maurice Sendak, William Steig, Mort Drucker, David Small, and Richard Egielski.  Mr. Yorinks is the founder and director of The Night Kitchen Radio Theater.