Jean de Brunhoff 1899 - 1937 Jean de Brunhoff was born in 1899 and began the Babar series after his wife had told their children a story of a bear who became king. He painted pictures of little Babar and it became a story that children still love today. Jean de Brunhoff died of tuberculosis in 1937.
Janet Schulman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 16, 1933. She graduated from Antioch College in 1956. She started her publishing career in 1959 at Macmillan, where she became the director of children's book marketing. She then worked for more than 30 years at Random House, where she was the last editor there to edit Dr. Seuss. She fought for equality for women in publishing. She also wrote numerous children's books including Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City, The Nutcracker, Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, A Bunny for All Seasons, and 10 Easter Egg Hunters: A Holiday Counting Book. She died of complications from lung cancer on February 11, 2011 at the age of… 77.
Kevin Henkes was born in Racine, Wis. in 1960 and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One of four children in his family, Henkes grew up with aspirations of being an artist. As a junior in high school, one of Henkes's teachers awakened his interest in writing. Falling in love with both writing and drawing, Henkes realized that he could do both at the same time as a children's book author and illustrator. At the age of 19, Henkes went to New York City to get his first book, All Alone, published. Since that time, he has written and illustrated dozens of picture books including Chrysanthemum, Protecting Marie, and A Weekend with Wendell. A recurring character in several of… Henkes's books is Lily, an outrageous, yet delightful, individualist. Lily finds herself the center of attention in the books Chester's Way, Julius, the Baby of the World, and Lily's Purple Plastic Purse. A Weekend With Wendell was named Children's Choice Book by the Children's Book Council in 1986. He recieved the Elizabeth Burr Award for Words of Stone in 1993.