Oh Dear, Look What I Got!

Growing up in Ipswich, England, Helen Oxenbury loved nothing more than drawing. As a teenager, she entered art school and basked in the pleasure of drawing, and nothing but drawing, all day. During vacations she helped out at the Ipswich Repertory Theatre workshop, mixing paints for set designers. It was there that she decided her future lay in theatre design. Sets and scenery, not books, remained Helen's preoccupation for her early adult life as she embarked on careers in theatre, film, and TV. After marrying John Burningham, another of the world's most eminent children's book illustrators, and giving birth to their first child, at last she turned to illustrating children's books. Today, Helen is among the most popular and critically acclaimed illustrators of her time. Her numerous books for children include the Kate Greenaway Medal-winning Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; Smarties Book Prize-winning Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell; We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen; as well as her classic board books for babies.

If he wasn’t already a poet, storyteller, BBC broadcaster, and prolific children’s book author, Michael Rosen says he would like to be an actor. Anyone who has seen him in performance knows that he already is—whether bringing his humorous verse to life in front of a classroom or presenting an internationally broadcast radio show. The charismatic author was introduced to the pleasures of language at an early age by his parents, both of them distinguished educators in London. When he was a teenager, his mother produced a British radio program that featured poetry, and this inspired him to start writing his own. Now a highly popular children’s poet and author, Michael Rosen is known for “telling it like it is” in the ordinary language that children actually use. Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, he explores the experience of sadness in a way that resonates with all readers, with unmitigated truth and a touch of humor. About this book, which came from the author’s real and very personal grief, Kirkus Reviews raves in a starred review, “Readers . . . will be touched by the honesty and perception here.” In the picture book This Is Our House, Michael Rosen captured the ways that children use the language of discrimination. “Our attitudes about who’s okay and who’s not okay get formed when we’re very young,” says the author, whose simple, lighthearted story makes a compelling case for tolerance.