Bio

Lynne Cherry is the author and/or illustrator of over 30 award-winning books for children. Her best-selling books such as The Great Kapok Tree, A River Ran Wild and The Armadillo From Amarillo teach children a respect for the earth. She lectures widely — and passionately — about how children can make a difference in a democratic society — if they feel strongly about something, they can change the world. She explains to educators how using nature to integrate curriculum makes a child's learning relevant. Lynne's books were inspired by her love of the natural world. She is also an avid canoeist and hiker.

Lynne is also an environmental activist whose books are used to launch campaigns to save land, clean up rivers, save forests, and help migratory birds. For example, her book A River Ran Wild is in most fourth-grade classroom reading anthologies and is used by teachers to launch projects to study local watersheds and to clean them up. Her book Flute's Journey: The Life of a Wood Thrush focused national media attention on conservation efforts to save the Belt Woods in Maryland when she was featured on CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.

Lynne earned her B.A. at Tyler School of Art and her M.A. in History at Yale University. She has been artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian, the Geosciences department at both the University of Massachusetts and Cornell University, at the Marine Biological Lab, and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and at the Princeton Environmental Institute at Princeton University.

Visit Lynne Cherry's Web site.