My background

My love affair with books began the moment I finally deciphered those mysterious black marks: standing outside my elementary school, proudly reading to my parents a sign, “No Parking 9:00 A.M. – 6:00 P.M.”

As the son of a sculptor and a painter (see www.irenemonatstern.com ), I have always sought to combine words and images. I consider ch

My love affair with books began the moment I finally deciphered those mysterious black marks: standing outside my elementary school, proudly reading to my parents a sign, “No Parking 9:00 A.M. – 6:00 P.M.”

As the son of a sculptor and a painter (see www.irenemonatstern.com ), I have always sought to combine words and images. I consider children’s picture books one of the highest forms of art.

Growing up in Santa Monica, California, I spent most of my free time devouring Santa Monica Public Library where I later worked as a page and eventually served as “Page Emeritus” and President of the Friends of SMPL. While in college I took classes on medieval illuminated manuscripts and “Topics in Book Illustration” and worked part-time in the library's book bindery as a “book doctor, healing sick books."

After graduating in 1982 from Haverford College with a major in Music, and six months teaching English in Japan, I made my way to New York City. There a chance comment while visiting a friend who worked at Doubleday (“I just got a call from the children’s book editor; she’s looking for an assistant. Are you inter- ested?”) led to a revelation (“Oh, yeah! Children’s books. That’s what I want to do!”). I worked for two years in Doubleday’s Books for Young Readers department, including six months as Acting Director. It was there that I began to amass my children’s book collection, which I still add to with alarming frequency.

Since that time I have continued to be involved in every aspect of children’s books as a writer, illustrator, and reviewer. My work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” and I have been a consultant and lecturer for the National Conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and the Getty Center for Education in the Arts.

My family and my extensive collection of children’s books, especially those from the 1930s to the 1960s.

“I am lost for words - your book is so wonderful that I am quite overcome! What a marvellous idea to write about Montaigne for children, and you have done it beautifully. And of course it's about much more than Montaigne himself - it's about reading and writing, and communicating in general. I can't imagine being a child reading this, and not immediately rushing off to my room and to write something ... anything. (Or an adult, for that matter.)”

- Sarah Bakewell, winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography for

How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer