Amy Hest is the author of many beloved and award-winning picture books, including Kiss Good Night, illustrated by Anita Jeram, and When Jessie Came Across the Sea, illustrated by P.J. Lynch. Amy Hest lives in New York City.
Helen Oxenbury is the illustrator of many well-loved books, including most recently There's Going to Be a Baby, written by her husband, John Burningham. Helen Oxenbury lives in London.
Amy Hest secretly aspired to be a writer from an early age, but, she says, “I never thought my life was exciting enough for a writer. I didn’t have any fantastic adventures. I didn’t run away from home. I actually got along with my parents. I was such a goody two-shoes that I couldn’t help but wonder what other kid would want to read anything I wrote.”
But her passion for books must have been apparent to all who knew her. Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, she worked in a library as a page from the age of sixteen. “I wanted the job so badly that I went to the director’s office every single day after school to tell him so,” she says. “Finally one day he called me to say that he had moved my application to the top of the pile and would keep it there if that meant I wouldn’t come by to bother him the next day.” Amy Hest worked as a children’s librarian in the New York Public Library system in the early 1970s, and then for years in children’s book publishing. She wrote all during this time, still not sharing her ambition with the world, not even with her publishing co-workers!
Today, Amy Hest is the highly versatile author of more than thirty books for young readers, many of which affectionately address family and intergenerational themes. Mr. George Baker is the tender tale of an elderly man and a young boy linked by the common pursuit of learning to read. Also among Amy Hest’s books are the beloved Baby Duck stories, illustrated by Jill Barton, including Guess Who, Baby Duck!, a sweet depiction of the special bond between Baby Duck and her Grampa. About In the Rain With Baby Duck—which received a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award—the author says, “It’s about things that I love: pancakes and rainy days and children (like mine) who pout, and parents (like me) who have their own agenda, and grandparents (like my own) who have a way of making problems go away.”
Another series of picture books by Amy Hest were inspired by the author’s son, Sam. “When Sam was small he knew countless ways to keep me in his room at bedtime,” she says of her inspiration for New York Times bestseller Kiss Good Night. Its follow-up, Don’t You Feel Well, Sam? came from memories of “some long-ago nights . . . when things weren’t quite right. There were many hugs, of course. And occasionally, a dose of terrible-tasting medicine.” In You Can Do It, Sam, the third of these endearing tales (all illustrated by Anita Jeram), Sam, with gentle encouragement from his mother, ventures out of the house to deliver homemade treats to his neighbors all by himself.
Amy Hest claims to be “a very moody person,” noting that “what I write depends on my mood.” These changeable moods have produced not just picture books but also novels for middle-grade readers, including I Love You, Soldier and its sequel, The Private Notebook of Katie Roberts, Age 11—both of which were named Booklist Editors’ Choices—as well as The Great Green Notebook of Katie Roberts, Age 12, and Remembering Mrs. Rossi. These moods have also earned the author a host of awards, including the prestigious Christopher Medal, twice—for the highly acclaimed When Jessie Came Across the Sea, illustrated by P.J. Lynch, and for Kiss Good Night.
Most of Amy Hest’s books take place close to home, in New York, where she and her husband live. “One of the things I love about working at home is the proximity to the refrigerator,” she says. “If you are going to be a writer, you need to have a lot of ice cream. When I have a bad writer’s day—and that happens a lot—a spoonful of ice cream perks me up. And when you have a good writer’s day, you need a reward.”
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 theater design.
While studying costume design, however, Helen Oxenbury was told by a teacher, “This is hopeless, you know. You ought to go and do illustrations—you’re much more interested in the character, and we don’t know who’s going to play the part!”
But sets and scenery, not books, remained Helen Oxenbury’s preoccupation for several more years as she embarked on careers in theater, film, and TV. After marrying John Burningham, oneof 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. “When I had babies,” Helen Oxenbury says, “I wanted to be home with them and look for something to do there.”
Today, Helen Oxenbury is among the most popular and critically acclaimed illustrators of her time. She is a two-time Greenaway Medal winner, and her numerous books for children include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its companion, Alice Through the Looking Glass, both by Lewis Carroll; Martin Waddell’s Farmer Duck, which won the Nestlé Smarties Children’s Book Prize; So Much! by Trish Cooke; as well as her own classic board books for babies. She collaborated with author Phyllis Root on the jubilant, no-nonsense tall tale Big Momma Makes The World. “As I read Phyllis’s text, I imagined Big Momma as part Buddha, part housewife,” she says. “It was intimidating to create a whole world, but very enjoyable.”
And what does she love most about her work? Thinking up new ideas? Seeing the finished book? Not at all. For Helen, “The best part is when I think I know what I’m doing and I’ve completed a few drawings. In fact, when I get about a third of the way through, and I feel I’m on my way, then I’m happy. It’s like reading a good book—you don’t want it to end.”
Helen Oxenbury lives in London and works in a nearby studio. She is also an avid tennis player.
