About the Author

In addition to the Coretta Scott King, the Orbis Pictus, the NAACP Image Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards, Pat Cummings is the recipient of nine t-shirts, twenty two mugs, seven hundred forty-five ballerina drawings and one embroidered pillow from readers. After graduating from Pratt Institute she began a career as a freelance illustrator, working on editorial, advertising, theatrical and, eventually, picture book projects . Pat is the author and/or illustrator of over 35 books, both fiction and non-fiction, from board books to young adult. Her TALKING WITH ARTISTS series features prominent children's book illustrators while TALKING WITH ADVENTURERS, co-authored and edited with her sister, Linda Cummings Minor, PhD. features interviews and profiles of explorers and scientists such as Jane Goodall and Robert Ballard. She has worked as a producer and writer for Nickelodeon's Gullah Gullah Island and now teaches children's book illustration and writing at Parsons, The New School for Design and Pratt Institute. Former gifted and award-winning students of her class include David Eza Stein, Hiroe Nakata and Julian Hector. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Pat was an Army brat and grew up in Germany, Okinawa, Kansas and Virginia. She and her husband Chuku Lee, author of her latest book, live in a loft in beautiful downtown Brooklyn, New York. Their new picture book, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, is due from HarperCollins in February 2014.

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