Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes was born on November 27, 1960, in Racine, Wisconsin. He thought he would be an artist until his junior year of high school when a teacher encouraged Henkes in his writing efforts. Henkes discovered that children's books combined both his literary and artistic interests. Henkes wrote his first book during his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The book's theme deals with how a child describes the pleasures of occasional solitude. This theme became common in many of Henkes's later books. Henkes, one of five children, says that many of his storylines are inspired by his family and the neighborhood where he grew up.

Henkes has written and illustrated around 50 critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, early readers, and novels in his career thus far. Henkes's first book, All Alone, was published in 1981 by Greenwillow Books. More than 50 books followed, including Chrysanthemum and Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. In 1994, Henkes was a runner-up for one of the premier American Library Association (ALA) children's book awards, the Caldecott Medal for Owen, one of his mouse books. In 2004, Henkes was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal for Olive's Ocean. The following year, he won the Caldecott Medal for Kitten's First Full Moon, recognizing that as the year's best children's picture book published in the United States. All of Henkes's books to date have been published by Greenwillow Books. He won the inaugural Phoenix Picture Book Award in 2013 for Owen.

The Phoenix Awards from the Children's Literature Association recognize the best books that did not win major awards when they were first published twenty years earlier.^[7][8] In 2014, Henkes received a Newbery Honor for his book, The Year of Billy Miller.^[9] In 2020, he was awarded the ALA's Children's Literature Legacy Award, celebrating his entire body of work.^[10] Henkes and his wife, Laura Dronzek, have collaborated on a series of picture books based on the four seasons, with Henkes writing the story and Dronzek providing the acrylic painting illustrations.^[11]

Henkes lives in Madison with his wife, artist Laura Dronzek, and their two children.^[12]

Henkes has won numerous awards for both his books and as an author. In 2007, Henkes delivered the Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, an honor bestowed upon "an individual of distinction in the field of children’s literature ... chosen to write and deliver a lecture that will make a significant contribution to the world of children’s literature".^[13] In 2008, he won the Council for Wisconsin Writers' Major Achievement Award.^[14] In 2009, Henkes was a finalist for the Astrid Lindgren Prize^[15] and won the Jeremiah Ludington Award, which honors "an individual who has made a significant contribution to the paperback book business".^[16] In 2020, he won the Children's Literature Legacy Award honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a "significant and lasting contribution to literature for children".^[6]

In 1987, Library of Congress named Once Around the Block one of the Best Books of the Year. In 2017, the American Booksellers Association inducted Kitten's First Full Moon into their Picture Book Hall of Fame.^[17] The Year of Billy Miller was a New York Times bestselling book.^[18] Kirkus Reviews and The Horn Book Magazine named it one of the best books of 2013.^[18][19] Waiting was a New York Times bestselling book.^[20] Kirkus Reviews and The Horn Book named it one of the best books of 2013.^[20][19] The Horn Book has included many of Henkes's other books on their lists of the best children's books of the year: Jessica (1989), Julius, the Baby of the World (1990), Chrysanthemum (1991), Words of Stone (1992), Owen (1993), Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse (1996), Olive’s Ocean (2003), A Good Day (2007), Old Bear (2008), Birds (2009), Penny and Her Doll (2012), Penny and Her Marble (2013), Waiting (2015), Egg (2017), A Parade of Elephants (2018), Penny and Her Sled (2019), Billy Miller Makes a Wish (2021), and Oh, Sal (2022).^[19]