Cari Meister has written more than a hundred books for children, including the Tiny series (Penguin) and the Meet the Monsters series (Stone Arch Books). She has received many awards for her books. Most recently, Airplane Adventure (Stone Arch Books), was named to Parents magazine Best Books for 2010. Cari has been ... Read morefascinated by the night sky ever since she can remember. Her love of space and stars led her to Space Camp when she was growing up. Today, Cari lives in the mountains of Colorado, with her husband, four boys, two horses and one dog. I live in the Eternal City, in a small colorful flat on the 5th floor, not far from a beautiful park, where you can admire an amazing landscape of Roman ruins against the sunset background. Although my tiny balcony does not overlook the park, I like to have the perception that near my house and maybe under too, there is a piece of ancient Roma. I work at home in a part of the flat that is the dining and living room too...and that sometimes is a guest room too, sharing my workchair with Meo, our glutton cat. I draw all the day trying at the same time, to remember everything I need to buy at the market and waiting for my cute boyfriend to return home after work, for cooking the dinner..(because he is the chef, I am not...) I love to speak by myself when I take a shower and to change the furniture disposition in my house, or try to keep my cat on a diet, but my main interest remains to draw. I started this job almost without knowing that it would have been the job of my life because it has always been a natural pastime since I was a child, when drawing for me was such as writing my own diary...my own secrets. The best memory of my childhood concerns the big quantity of paper reams that my father brought to me. He was a bookbinder, so finding a sheet to draw on has never been a problem in my house. At school I was not really ...ehem...eager to learn, but I often met teachers that encouraged my talent, turning a blind eye on my scholastic results. My discouraged parents capitulated and accepted to enroll me to an Artistic High School. By that point, my life began to be easy. I graduated in Illustration at The European Institute of Design in Rome. I started early to work for a wide range of clients in many different specialities, from editorial and publishing to advertising and I have been a background designer and a teacher too. I always found every field of application interesting to explore, passing through advertising to historical recostruction, from landscapes to details, using watercolor or digital painting, drawing with charcoals or wacom tablet! I am quite happy to live doing what I always loved and I have everything I need. My only dream for the future is to still continue to work as illustrator with my own well organized workstation in a bigger home possibly on the beach, looking at the sea from huge windows, with the same man with me and the same cat sitting on it's favorite sofa... Show Less