Biographical Information

• Kevin Henkes was born on November 27, 1960 in Racine, Wisconsin.
• As a child, Kevin loved to read books and visit local art museums, which inspired him  later in many of his books where he was both illustrator and author. Henkes loved to draw and paint at an early age and wanted to be an artist.
• During his senior year in high school, he read Barbara Bader’s American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to The Beast Within and was encouraged by the book.
• Henkes attended University of Wisconsin at Madison because of its' School of Education’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center. 
• During the summer after his freshman year at University of Wisconsin at Madison, Henkes traveled to Greenwillow Books in New York and was given a job as a writer.
• His first picture book, All Alone, became published in 1981 when he was working at Greenwillow Books. 
• In 1986 A Weekend with Wendell was published, and the mouse characters in this book inspired eighteen more picture books. All of the mouse books are both illustrated and written by Kevin Henkes, and they focus on emotional situations that children face in everyday life. 
• Henkes also writes novels and has eleven currently published. 
• Kevin Henkes has written thirty-two picture books and eleven novels. 
• A division of the American Library Association, The Association of Library Service to Children, asked Henkes to give the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture in 2007. Henkes was chosen to deliver the lecture because he is “an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of children’s literature.”

Awards

• 1987 Children's Choices: A Weekend with Wendell
• 1988 ALA Notable Children's Books: Chester's Way
• 1990 Horn Book Fanfare and Best Books of 1989 School Library Journal: Jessica
• 1990 ALA Notable Children's Books, 1990 Booklist Editors Choice, 1990 CCBC Choices, and 1990 the Horn BookFanfare: Julius, the Baby of the World
• 1994 Caldecott Honor Book: Owen
• 1999 Charlotte Zolotow Award: Highly Commended: Circle Dogs
• 2000 ALA Notable Children's Book, 2001 CCBC Choices, 2001 IRA Children's Choices, 2001 IRA Teachers' Choices, 2000 Parenting Magazine Reading Magic Award, 2001 Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books, 2001 School Library Journal Best Children's Books, and 2001 WLS Outstanding Children's Books: Wemberly Worried
• 2004 Newbery Honor: Olive's Ocean
• 2005 Caldecott Medal: Kitten’s First Full Moon
• ALA Notable Children’s Book and Horn Book Fanfare: Chrysanthemum

Cooperative Children's Book Center. 1991. Awards and Honors for Kevin Henke's Work. Retrieved from http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/authors/henkes/awards.htm.

Harper Collins Publishers. Bio for Kevin Henkes. Retrieved from http://www.kevinhenkes.com/?page_id=154.