Charles Martin Jones was born in 1912 in Spokane, Wash. and began his distinguished career in animation in 1932, as a cel washer at Ubbe Iwerks Studio. In 1936, he became an animator for Leon Schlesinger, later bought by Warner Brothers. He stayed with Warner Brothers until the studio closed in 1961; during his employment there, he was animator and director for such characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Marvin the Martian. He has been honored with four Academy awards and directed one of the most popular Christmas specials of all time, the Peabody award-winning Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). His What's Opera, Doc? (1957), in which Bugs and Elmer Fudd do their own… version of Wagner's Ring Cycle, was the first animated film to be included in the National Film Registry (1992). Chuck Jones is also the author, adapter, editor, and illustrator of several children's books, including Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1982) and William the Backwards Skunk (1987).