Jenny’s short BIO---for teachers and librarians and event coordinators:

Jenny Whitehead is the author/illustrator of two children’s poetry books,
Lunch Box Mail (2001) and Holiday Stew (Spring 2007). She is currently illustrating a poetry collection written by Elsa Knight Bruno called Punctuation Celebration (due in stores Fall 2008).

All books are published by Henry Holt of New York, NY.

Jenny majored in art at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She designed wallpaper before becoming an art director at Hallmark Cards in 1987. After seven years, she left Hallmark to pursue children's book writing and illustrating full-time.

She currently lives in Kansas City, MO with her husband Pete and two children, Bailey (11) and Chelsea (6).

Jenny’s longer BIO---If you've got the time!

When I was a child, there were very few clues that I would be an artist when I grew up. I didn’t draw in sketch-books or take art classes. I didn’t know the difference between watercolors and acrylics. I DID love a new box of crayons, though. A box of 64, each with its fancy crayon name--orchid, scarlet, periwinkle, shamrock--colors with names such as these had to be cared for properly. They made me feel important, even when I was only trying desperately to stay within the lines. Soon, I discovered that layering crayon colors could make new colors, pressing hard could make deep shadows, rubbing lightly blended tones and soft shading created light and accents.

My grade school didn’t have an art program. We had a lady who walked from classroom to classroom with a cart of paper and magic markers. One day, though, when I was in second grade, she brought paints. I painted a Raggedy Ann and Andy. The principal picked my painting to hang in her office for two whole weeks! I was thrilled. But then it was back to paper and markers. I don’t remember drawing at all for the next ten years.

In 7th grade, a wonderful thing happened. I got Ms. Kreager as my English
teacher. I learned to create with words instead of colors. She taught us how to write every form of poetry. We wrote plays and performed them. We gave speeches, kept journals, and wrote stories. We created a thirty-minute newscast with commercials. The two anchor people wrote the news stories, the weatherman wrote the weather predictions and drew maps, and the sportscaster wrote the sports news. My teacher was very strict---if the newscast, with commercials, lasted more than thirty minutes exactly, we were docked points.

She had rules about writing. (For example, don’t reuse a word in a paragraph. If you are writing about a train, you had to come up with other ways to say ‘train’.) She was tough, but that only made me want to work harder. She taught us CREATIVITY…how to brainstorm ideas and tell stories and express feelings. She was the best teacher I have ever had. And do you know what? My brother, Michael Lukas, a comedian, who also creatively writes stories and jokes, also credits this same teacher for his career path. Who knows, maybe a teacher will inspire you in the same way! If so, thank him or her. A teacher will really appreciate it now or in the years to come.

During that year, I bought my first and only thesaurus and rhyming dictionary. I still use the same ones today! They are pretty beat up, but I consider them lucky since they’ve helped me get two books published (sort of like a baseball player’s “lucky bat”).

In high school, I kept writing poetry but was afraid to take art classes. Other kids who took art came from schools with art programs and could draw a lot better than I could. I didn’t want to look foolish, so I stayed away from art…but I doodled. I doodled in the margins of every notebook I had. I doodled patterns and designs. Little did I know then, these doodles would help me have the courage to switch majors in college from psychology to art. These doodles gave me a clue that maybe I could design wallpaper and gift wrap and fabric.

When the professors looked at them, luckily, they agreed. So, the professors gave me a chance, my parents gave me the time to try, and my own hard work helped me catch up with all of the other art students. I didn’t sleep much (although I did sleep through some art history lectures and some painting critiques! Oops!). I worked harder at drawing, painting, sculpting, and designing than I had worked at anything in my entire life. But I loved every minute of it so it didn’t feel like work. It was fun! I couldn’t believe college could be so fun. My friends went out to movies…I stayed home and painted. I was very happy.

I got better and better and by the time I was a junior (1986) at Miami University in Oxford Ohio, I had earned an internship to design wallpaper at Imperial Wallcovering in Cleveland. There, I learned a lot about mixing and matching colors because I had to take one design and paint it in several different color combinations. I went to the mills and approved strike-offs (strike-offs are wallpaper test sheets). I had to make sure they matched the artwork. Because the mill workers weren’t artists, I would have to say, ‘Can you add a bucket of white or a half of bucket of yellow?’ instead of asking them to make a color “cooler” or “warmer”. When the strike-off looked just like the artwork, I would yell, ‘Run it!’ and they would run 10,000 rolls of wallpaper. It was very intimidating, but I really learned about color that year.

In 1987, after working at the wallpaper company for a year, Hallmark Cards in Kansas City recruited me to be an art director. I worked with the editors and the artists and the marketing staff to create new card products, gift wrap, party patterns, stickers---all sorts of things. Those years were like graduate school. I learned so much from watching all of the artists paint. Every one had a different style and used different mediums, like watercolors, acrylics, oils, pastels and colored pencils….and sometimes, yes, even crayons! After seven years, I was getting antsy. I didn’t want to watch other people create art and write—I wanted to do it myself! So, I did a scary thing. I left Hallmark and decided to try to write and paint children’s books (luckily my husband, Pete Whitehead, also an artist, was willing to stay at Hallmark and
be the breadwinner while I launched my new career.)

I joined a critique group. I wrote and rewrote poetry. I read many picture books and looked closely at the pictures. I wrote lots of stories. I filled up a sketchbook. I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and learned all about publishing children’s books. But before I tried to get my own work published, my brother told me something very important. He said I needed to write 100 things before I should even try to get published. I needed to learn my craft. I agreed. So I wrote about 40 poems and then started sending them to magazines and publishers. I received some very polite rejection letters. Then, I figured out a book direction for ‘Lunch Box Mail.’ I thought to myself, kids have to learn a lot the first eight years of their lives. They learn to talk, walk, tie their shoes, read, ride a bike, tell time, and hit a ball along with so many other things. They have a lot of “firsts”--first day of school, first time to the dentist, first time getting a new baby brother or sister, losing a first tooth. Some things are exciting, some are scary, some are frustrating. And some things are just fun to discuss---why are all kids’ menus the same no matter where you eat? If you could be a bug, what kind of bug would you be and why? What are some funny-sounding foods to eat?

The editor at Henry Holt liked the ideas for the book, but she said, ‘Can you write twenty poems? We want to make sure you can do a whole book.” So, I wrote twenty poems. Then she said, “Can you illustrate the 20 poems so we can make sure you can illustrate a whole book?” And I did. After six months of “proving I could do it,” they gave me a contract. Then, it took me two years to write forty poems and illustrate them.

While writing ‘Lunch Box Mail’, I had my daughter, Bailey. While working on ‘Holiday Stew’ I had my daughter, Chelsea. Since ‘Holiday Stew’ was a longer book and I had to do more research before I could write the poems, it took me five years to finish. Now I’m illustrating ‘Punctuation Celebration’, a wonderful poetry book about punctuation written by Elsa Knight Bruno. After I’m done with this book, I have a lot of ideas waiting to be worked on….ideas for chapter books, picture books and other poetry collections. I hope to be doing children’s books until I’m really old, so I hope to never run out of ideas! I keep my sketchbooks handy and full of idea-starters. It’s always good to have a little notebook on hand. You can write and draw anything you want in it and no one will grade it or even look at it if you don’t want them to. It is all yours to have fun with.

That’s my story. I hope to add more in the years to come. Meanwhile, I’ll keep writing and drawing and painting and I hope you do, too! I’d love
to read some of your books someday. Anything is possible if you work hard at it. Dream big!!