About this item
In his latest eye-popping work of picture book nonfiction, the Caldecott Honor-winning author-illustrator Steve Jenkins explains how for most animals, eyes are the most important source of information about the world in a biological sense. The simplest eyes - clusters of light-sensitive cells - appeared more than one billion years ago, and provided a big survival advantage to the first creatures that had them. Since then, animals have evolved an amazing variety of eyes, along with often surprising ways to use them.
About the Author
Steve was born in 1952 in Hickory, North Carolina. His father, who would become a physics professor and astronomer (and recently his co-author on a book about the Solar System) , was in the military and, later, working on science degrees at several different universities. We moved often. Steve lived in North Carolina, Panama, Virginia, Kansas, and Colorado. Wherever he lived, he kept a menagerie of lizards, turtles, spiders, and other animals, collected rocks and fossils, and blew things up in his small chemistry lab. Because he moved often, Steve didn't have a large group of friends, and he spent a lot of time with books. His parents read to him until he could read himself, and he became an obsessive reader. His interest in science led me to believe that I'd be a scientist himself. At the last minute, he chose instead to go to art school in North Carolina, where he studied graphic design. After graduation he moved to New York City, where he worked in advertising and design, first in large firms and then with his wife, Robin Page, in their own small graphic design firm. Robin, also an author and illustrator, is his frequent collaborator - they've made sixteen children's books together. Their daughter Page was born in 1986 and our son, Alec, two years later. They began reading to them when they were just a few months old, and Steve became interested in making children's books himself. My wife and I read to our two older children almost every night until hisdaughter was 12 or 13, long after they were reading on their own. It was, in many ways, the best part of the day. In 1994 they moved to from New York City to Boulder, Colorado, where they work in a studio attached to their house, which was built in the 1880s and often functions as if it were still the 19th century. Their youngest son, Jamie, was born in 1998. The questions his children asked over the years have been the inspiration for many of their books.
