Seymour Fleishman was born in 1918. He graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army in Australia and New Guinea, working as a cartographer and sometime illustrator of newsletters and officers' menus. After the war, he became an artist in the promotions department of the Chicago Sun newspaper. A few years later, he became a freelance illustrator. He did the drawings for almost 100 books, about 80 of them for children including The Blueberry Pie Elf and the books starring Gus the ghost written by Jane Thayer. He wrote and illustrated several books including Where's Kit, Four Cheers for Camping, and Gumbel, the Fire-Breathing Dragon. He died… after a brief illness in May 2012 at the age of 94.