Douglas Florian, writer and illustrator of children's books, was born March 18, 1950 in New York City. He was educated at Queens College of the City University of New York, receiving a B.A. in 1973. He also attended the School of Visual Arts in 1976. His early work was as a political illustrator and cartoonist; he did many drawings for The New York Times and for the New Yorker magazine. More recently, his self-illustrated books include A Fisher, Beast Feast, and Bing Bang Boing. His illustrations have appeared in Freeing the Natural Voice (with Kristin Linklater), Dorothy O. Van Woerkom's Tit for Tat, and Thomas M. Cook and Robert A. Russell's Introduction to Management Science.… Additionally, he has contributed more than 300 drawings to magazines and newspapers, including Travel and Leisure, Across the Board, and The Nation. Florian has received numerous awards including the Reading Magic Award from Parenting magazine in 1994 for Bing, Bang, Boing. He was the Books of Distinction finalist in the Hungry Mind Review and Bing Bang Boing. Beast Feast received the Gold Medal from the National Parenting Publications awards in 1994 and the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Poetry in 1995.