Listen, Wonder, Ask

About Elly Berke

Elly Berke has always loved children's literature and the power of asking good questions. Her earliest influence was Barbara Cooney whom she met in 1991 at a book signing in Damariscotta Maine. The characters in this story are inspired by people she has met on her professional journey through public education: leading programs at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum teaching ESL in bilingual schools and studying Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Outside of writing and teaching she is a professional actor involved in many projects around her local Somerville MA and virtually through her home voice over studio. Luciana Navarro Powell has created art since childhood and became a full-time illustrator in 2001. She moved from watercolor and acrylic paints to the digital brushloving the freedom and the possibilities of experimentation with texturesand then to mixed media incorporating photographs and scanned objects with traditional techniques in a digital melting pot. The colors vibrancy and warmth of her native Brazil infuse her work with a sunny optimism humor and warm human-animal-landscape interactions. As an immigrant she makes sure that kids can see themselves in her art.