About Me

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to draw and make up stories. As a child, I was always drawing pictures of my Nana, my dog, and my favorite animals, and then making up stories about them. My notebooks in school were absolutely covered with giraffes, robots, babies, kangaroos, basketball players, and ostriches.

It wasn’t until after I graduated from Hudson Valley Community College with an associate’s degree in Radiologic Technology, though, that I decided to do something with my God-given gift of drawing. Sure, being an X-ray technologist paid the bills just fine, but my true love was art. After an unsuccessful attempt at publishing a comic strip, I set my sights on children’s books. It happened one day while I was out buying books for my then seven-year old niece, Marissa. I was completely awestruck by the beautiful array of picture books before me, and knew right then and there that was what I was meant to do!

After joining fine organizations such as The Children’s Literature Connection and The Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators, attending countless conferences and workshops, and building a portfolio filled with art geared toward the children’s market, I headed to Manhattan. It was there that I met my fantastic editor Dinah Stevenson and my wonderful art director Joann Hill at Clarion Books. Dinah and Joann believed in me enough to publish my first picture book, The Saturday Escape. Since then, I’ve published two more books with Clarion, as well as created illustrations for several clients in the educational market, including Scholastic, Weekly Reader Magazine, Mcgraw-Hill and Scot Foresman. I am represented by Christina A. Tugeau.

I currently live in Albany, NY, where I was born and raised, with my lovely wife Jean and really good baby Ryan James.