James Howe is the acclaimed author of more than eighty books for young readers, including the E. B. White Read Aloud Award–winning Houndsley and Catina and its sequels, as well as the much-lauded series about Bunnicula. He lives in New York State.

Randy Cecil has illustrated many books for children, including Looking For a Moose by Phyllis Root, And Here's To You! by David Elliott. He is also the author-illustrator of Gator and Duck. Randy Cecil lives in Houston.

I was born in Houston, Texas. Illustrating picture books is all I have ever wanted to do, and I spent most of my time drawing as a child. At age four I wrote letters, with pictures included, to my favorite illustrators. My mother tells me I also included “tips” on how they might make their books better. Surprisingly, Joel Schick and Uri Shulevitz wrote me back!

After high school I went to Otis/Parsons School of Design (now Otis Art Institute) in Los Angeles, but left to work and travel for two years before returning to school at Rhode Island School of Design, where I graduated with a degree in painting.

I was lucky to get an internship as an assistant designer for a children’s publishing company in New York City for the summer before my final year of school. They offered me my first book right around the time I graduated, as well as a job as a freelance designer for them when things were busy, which luckily turned out to be a lot of the time.

Now I live back in Houston with my dog, Lucy.

Since starting my career, I have illustrated more than twenty books, several of which I wrote, for children of all ages. I have used a variety of media, but for the last decade or so, I have focused solely on painting with oil on paper.

Three Things You Might Not Know About Me:

1. I have been in the same rock band since I was thirteen years old.
2. We have written and recorded nearly four hundred songs, but we have only played five live shows.
3. One of those shows was a “benefit concert,” played in the living room of a neighbor who had the chicken pox.