Little Porcupine's Christmas

Joseph Slate, a native West Virginian, has always loved to paint and write. “I majored in journalism at the University of Washington in Seattle, worked as a reporter on The Seattle Times, was an editor for Foreign Broadcast Information Service (Washington, D.C., California, and Tokyo), then took a degree in fine arts at Yale, although I never illustrated my own books. My painting took a direction that was at odds with the fine art of illustration.”My ideas come from everywhere: a childhood drawing I did of a porcupine, a silly song I once sang to a godchild, and my teacher-niece and pupil-grand nephew getting ready for kindergarten, all kicked off an idea for a book. Now I am writing novels, and it’s the same what-if approach, although the first one came out of my West Virginia boyhood. It’s called Crossing the Trestle, and the young narrator faces an obstacle I did as a child.”

Felicia Bond is the New York Times bestselling creator of The Day It Rained Hearts, The Halloween Play, Tumble Bumble, Poinsettia and the Firefighters, and Poinsettia and Her Family. She is also the illustrator of the mega-selling If You Give . . . book series, which began with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. She lives in New Mexico.