I have been illustrating and writing books for children since 1985. After attending the Maryland Institute of Art briefly in 1973-74, I tried various trades including veterinary assistant, activities director for a nursing home, and production/advertising artist. In 1984 I quit my last paying job and began a career as a full-time starving artist, creating mostly spot illustrations, greeting cards and logo designs and otherwise taking on freelance print production jobs. I carted my portfolio to New York in 1985 and landed my first picture book project with Dodd, Mead and Company. My editors there moved to Putnam, and then to Cobblehill Books, an imprint of E.P. Dutton, and until August of 1997 when the imprint was squashed, I published all of my trade books with them. I also created activity book illustrations, flash cards and posters for School Zone, McGraw Hill, and other educational publishers.

These days I write and/or illustrate a variety of subjects. Currently I have about six projects circulating and am busy working on the illustrations for four early readers. I am also revising a middle-grade novel called Hot Walker.

2011 new books are Amazing Animal Skills, a series of five nonfiction books (Benchmark/Cavendish 2011) and a series of eight fairytale spoofs (Rourke, 2011). I'm really excited about all of these new books, and really enjoyed working on them. You can view sample illustrations and title lists on my - news page . It's great to finally see them all in print!

I am the (volunteer) Regional Advisor for the SCBWI Oregon Chapter. Check out our web page -- www.scbwior.com -- for information about our talented members and our Oregon events.

Marvin and I live in a house on a hill in western Oregon. We also have a farm across the road from us which we call The Funny Farm. I work in a very old mobile home that is slowly falling down, but we're currently going for broke and building another house there. Eventually we'll rent our house on the hill to a nurse.

We share our lives with a border collie rescue named Jeep who joined our family in 2008. I spend spare time gardening and growing plants and trees in our greenhouse, and also am in charge of walkin' path maintenance. We have about three miles of trails throughout our property which we walk every day, regardless of the weather, which can be interesting. In the evenings I like to couch it with my 5-string banjo in front of the television and try to learn frailing, which as Steve Martin points out, is "not even in the stupid dictionary." I also enjoy visiting friends on Facebook and watching CSI reruns. My favorite television show at the moment is "Once Upon a Time." Go figure.