Deborah Freedman

was an architect once, but now she loves to build worlds in books. Her first picture books were tiny ones, written and illustrated almost twenty years ago for her own young children. Deborah became especially inspired when her girls grew old enough to draw, after they began to create fantastical beings with endearing back-stories. She began then to play with their pictures by photocopying them and doodling around them, developing ideas that eventually matured many years later into her first picture book, Scribble, published by Knopf in 2007. Her next book, Blue Chicken, was released by Viking on September 15, 2011.

Immersed in the arts for as long as she can remember, Deborah majored in art history in college at Yale and went on to earn a masters degree in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. When she isn’t making picture books, she loves wandering through museums or the library, and playing Poohsticks with her family at home in Connecticut.