The Night Before the Night Before Christmas

Natasha is best known for her "The Night Before" series that's based on the Christmas classic, The Night Before Christmas. She writes mostly fiction for young children, but has also published narrative non-fiction. "I like finding little known facts about well-known people and sharing them with kids." Three of her books have been translated into foreign languages. Natasha has been publishing since 1994 and has more stories in the works. She lives with her cat, Purrsia, in Colorado. She collects squished pennies. Her happy place is being at the beach.

Put a kid in a room alone with nothing but pencils, paper, his own imagination and you get me. By normal standards I should be an anti-social home pest exterminator by day and WWF fan by night. But I'm not. I'm a cartoonist and for two reasons: I could not hit the curve but I could hit a nerve. I am classically trained to be able to find the classical station when I need to. Beyond that, I've been making it up since I was in that room alone. Truth is, God was in there with me just like he is today and we've managed to knock out some pretty decent work in a number of different areas working with some incredibly talented people and for some great clients. There are more wooden plaques on the wall than I ever imagined. All of them spelled my name right and frankly, I deserve them. But my beautiful wife, my two children, Mom, cat and completely untrainable dog I do not deserve. They are simply a blessing for which I am thankful everyday. (Bio via mikelester.com)