About the Illustrator:
Michael Austin

Have you ever felt like you have a weird way of looking at things? I first remember feeling that way with coloring books. "Stay inside the lines," I remember Mom suggesting. "Why?" I wondered. I thought I was being daring, wild and expressive; all those lines just slowed me down! What I created may have been a nightmarish mess, but it was in fact, my beginning in art.

I eventually grew up enough to discover "technique" and "control" with crayons but my "strange point of view" had grown with me. I realized this during the newspaper's Annual Thanksgiving Giant Turkey Coloring Contest. Mom offered tips on blending and shading, but insisted I figure everything out by myself. Armed with a freshly sharpened box of colors (not the HUGE box of crayons with the built-in sharpener I had always dreamed of, but an impressive assortment of colors nonetheless) I created a giant turkey complete with pointed fangs and multicolored feathers. The day came when my dad took me to deliver my masterpiece to the contest headquarters. Inside the lobby of the building, dozens of entries from other coloring artists hung from the walls. The first thing I noticed was that my turkey definitely didn't look like any of theirs. I handed my entry in and, unfortunately, that was where the story ended. I never won that coloring contest. After that disappointment, I was certain I would leave art behind and become a football player. But then my dad introduced me to drawing.

I had discovered art once again! No longer did I have to work with someone else's idea of the way things should look. I realized I could draw things my own way, strange or not. As my greatest artistic influence, my dad always drew pictures for me that I would recreate. This helped me practice and sharpen my skills. TV also began to make its mark on my life. Characters from shows like "The Addams Family" and "Scooby Doo" appeared in my drawings. Then, in the third grade, I had to write and illustrate a story every day as part of my school work. Most of my stories involved pretty much anything creepy, gross, or just plain weird (usually my family was the source of inspiration for those things, especially my little brother). As a matter of fact, I still put my family in my illustrations.

My odd outlook on the world led me to the city of New Orleans after college where I worked for a music company creating huge displays for music artists. It was during this job that I began to realize that looking at the world a little differently could actually be a good thing. I was encouraged to learn about different mediums like acrylic, pastel, airbrush, spray paint and experiment with them. Once I even created an 8 foot tall carving of a dog monster out of foam, plaster and rubber gloves! A few years later I replaced that huge dog monster with a much smaller real one that fit easily in my car and moved to Atlanta. This is where I met a lady named Kim who shared my strange views, and later became my wife. Kim is involved in every one of my projects from posing for oddball drawings to proofing final paintings. I've included her in both of my books for Peachtree Publishers (you may have to look hard to find her in The Horned Toad Prince, but she is there.)

So how did I get to illustrate books you might wonder? (Sometimes I wonder about that too!) Well, one day my stepmom met children's book author Carmen Deedy. She "presented" Ms. Deedy with a copy one of her own story ideas that I had illustrated many years ago. Ms. Deedy encouraged me to send samples of my art to the editors of Peachtree Publishers. As a result, I landed my first picture book projects, 13 Monsters Who Should Be Avoided (1998) written by Kevin Shortsleeve, and The Horned Toad Prince written by Jackie Mims Hopkins. This was a new adventure in art for a former kid who still loves anything weird.