2009 Winner: Children's Science Picture Book
Sisters & Brothers: Sibling Relationships in the Animal World, by Steven Jenkins & Robin Page. Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Animals and families always fascinate children, but the facts about siblings that fill this book will also engage adults. For example, young shrews line up holding each other's tails, with the mother leading the way. Female termites lay 30,000 eggs a day, whereas giant anteaters are always single offspring. Nile crocodiles cooperate even before they hatch, but hyena cubs can fight to the death. The authors' collages are sure to appeal to young readers.
About the Authors
Steve Jenkins
Steve Jenkins was born in 1952 in Hickory, North Carolina. His father was in the military, then working on physics and engineering degrees at several universities on his way to becoming a physics professor. Steve moved often, living in North Carolina, Panama, Virginia, Kansas, and Colorado. Wherever he lived, he maintained a small menagerie of lizards, turtles, spiders and other animals, and collected rocks and fossils. He also spent a lot of time with books. An early interest in science led him to believe that he'd be a scientist like his father. He chose instead to go to art school in North Carolina, where he studied graphic design and met his future wife, Robin Page. Moving to New York City after graduation, he worked in advertising and design, first in large firms and then with Robin in their own small design firm.
Robin Page
Robin Page was born in Reidsville, North Carolina, in 1957. She studied art and design, graduating from the North Carolina School of Design in 1979 and from The Cooper Union, in New York City, in 1980.
After working as an art director at Simon & Schuster and McCall's magazine, she co-founded a design business, Jenkins & Page, with Steve Jenkins in 1982. They worked together in New York for twelve years, designing publications, logos, and advertisements for corporate and institutional clients.
During this time she and Steve were married and had two children, Page and Alec. In 1994, they moved to Boulder. Their third child, Jamie, was born in 1998. Robin has written and illustrated several books for children, including two sticker books for Ticknor and Fields, a Houghton Mifflin imprint.