Laura Montenegro

My fascination and love of picture books began very early. My mother was an early childhood educator and librarian as well as a writer and artist. For her, poetry, paintings, and storytelling were as necessary as the bread and butter on our table and she introduced and invited us into the imaginative world of the picture book. We breathed it in like air.

Today, I am an author/illustrator of children’s picture books, as well as a painter, writer, printmaker, art educator. My picture books, A Bird About to Sing, Sweet Tooth, and One Stuck Drawer, all published by Houghton Mifflin, have won Parent’s Choice Awards and A Bird About to Sing was featured on Reading Rainbow. My most recent book, A Poet’s Bird Garden was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

For many years, I have taught classes for adults in the art of making picture books at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Big Table Studio in Evanston, IL. I am a visiting author/illustrator at schools and universities, have served as a children’s librarian and graphic artist at the Evanston Public Library, and I am co-founder and ensemble member of Theatre Zarko, Puppet Symbolist Theatre. I am an art educator, with a BA in Fine Arts and Anthropology, and an MA in Art Education from the University of New Mexico. I have taught art classes for children both in the Chicago Public Schools and at M. L. King Laboratory School in Evanston, IL.

I believe that both children and adults are natural artists and storytellers who respond to the picture book world with gusto and insight and that the picture book art form is a rich and inviting world for story making and expression.

Email: lauramontenegro@sbcglobal.net
Website: www.lauranymanmontenegro.com
Instagram: @lauranymanmontenegro
Facebook: lauranymanmontenegro