Ashley Bryan was born in New York City on July 13th and now lives on a small island off the coast of Maine, where he writes and illustrates books most of the year. A former teacher at Dartmouth College, he has compiled, written and illustrated numerous books, many of them African folktales, such as Ashley Bryan's African Tales, Uh Huh and The Story of Lightning and Thunder, and collections of spirituals such as All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African American Spirituals and What a Morning. His book Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum, received the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, and Lion and the Ostrich Chicks was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. (from CBC)