Jose Aruego was born in Manila, the Philippines on August 9, 1932. He completed a law degree at the University of the Philippines but chose a career as an illustrator instead. He moved to New York City in the l950's to attend Parsons School of Design. His first job after art school was pasting feathers on angel wings in an art studio. Before he started illustrating books, he was a cartoonist for two years. His first children's book, The King and His Friends, was published in 1969. During his lifetime, he illustrated 82 children's books including Herman the Helper written by Robert Kraus and We Hide, You Seek and Dance Away written by George Shannon. He worked on several books with his wife… and long-time collaborator Ariane Dewey including Whose Mouse Are You?, Leo the Late Bloomer, and Gregory the Terrible Eater. In 1976, he was received with the Outstanding Filipino Abroad in the Arts Award from the government of the Philippines. He died on August 9, 2012 at the age of 80.
Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey have illustrated more than seventy popular children's books together. <br>Their widely acclaimed Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems, written by Judy Sierra, was featured <br>on National Public Radio, won a gold medal from the National Parenting Publications Awards, and was a <br>Publishers Weekly, Ingram, Borders, and Amazon.com bestseller. They are the illustrators of the Robert Kraus <br>classics Leo the Late Bloomer and Herman the Helper, which received a Boston Globe-Horn Book- Honor.<br>Mr. Aruego and Ms. Dewey both live in New York City.
Sharmat was born in November 12, 1928 in Portland, Maine. After graduating from high school in 1946, she went on to Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Massachusetts. In 1947, she transferred to Westbrook Junior College in Portland, Maine where she graduated from the following year with a degree in merchandising. When she graduated from college, Sharmat took a position with a department store, but left to take a position in the Circulation Department at the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut in 1951, a position she held until 1954. At that time she transferred to join the circulation staff of the Yale Law Library, where she stayed until 1955. Sharmat's first published "work"… was a national advertising slogan for the W.T. Grant Company for their spring promotion. It was four words long. She published her first story while she was working at the library at Yale University. It was a short story for adults. Her second story was an article about Yale. It ended up becoming part of the Yale Memorabilia Collection. Her first published childrens book was Rex, 1967, and winner of the Book of the Year Citation from the Library of Congress. While the book did well, it was her third book Nate the Great, published in 1972, that really made her a writing success. In the 1960's and 1970s she wrote exclusively for children. Many of these books won awards from the Child Study Association and numerous magazines. In 1982, Sharmat broke onto the young adult writing scene with her first book, a novelization published by Dell of the CBS-TV sitcom, Square Pegs. Her first young adult novel, I Saw Him First, was published in 1989. Sharmat has written hundreds of books, mostly for children, including the "Nate the Great" series, the "Olivia Sharp, Agent for Secrets" series with her husband, Mitchell Sharmat, and "The Kids of the Bus" series with her son, Andrew. She has also written young adult novels under her own name and the name of Wendy Andrews, and the "Sorority Sisters" series.