Robert Kraus was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 21, 1925. When he was 10-years-old, he won a cartoon contest staged by the Milwaukee Journal. He received a plaque and had his cartoon printed in the paper. Two years later, the newspaper hired him to produce a weekly cartoon called Public Nuisances. By the time he was 16-years-old, he was selling cartoons to magazines like Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post. He studied at Milwaukee's Layton Art School and the Art Students' League in New York. After selling a few cartoons to The New Yorker, he was hired by the magazine as a contract artist. He worked there for 15 years and created 21 covers. While there, he started writing and… illustrating children's books. His books included All the Mice Came, Leo the Late Bloomer, and Whose Mouse Are You? He left The New Yorker in 1966 and founded Windmill Books. Within a year, the house had won a prestigious Caldecott Medal. After 20 years, he sold Windmill to Simon and Schuster. In 1983, he began a syndicated Sunday comic feature, called Zap! The Video Chap. He died of congestive heart failure on August 7, 2001 at the age of 76.
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.