Author and illustrator, Marc Brown was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1946. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. After college, he worked numerous odd jobs before he began his career. He is most renown for creating the Arthur series. The idea for Arthur, the aardvark came one night while telling his son a bedtime story. The first title in the series was "Arthur's Nose" written in 1976. Since then, Brown has written over thirty books in the Arthur Adventure series. D. W., Arthur's sister was another character created by Brown. In addition to writing, Brown also developed the Arthur television series on PBS.