Rebecca Kai Dotlich grew up in the Midwest exploring trails by the creek, reading comic books, making paper dolls and building snow forts. She was a good student in school, but by far not a perfect one. Even though she was mesmerized with reading and words from a young age, anything to do with math was, and still is, challenging.She attended Indiana University where she studied creative writing, art history and anthropology while she worked in the student library typing index cards for the card catalog.

After college she held many jobs; working in a department store, for a real estate firm, a state representative, and in public relations. After her children were born she decided that writing for children would be her life’s work, although that took many years to achieve.

Rebecca is a children’s poet and picture book author of titles such as What Can A Crane Pick Up? which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, What is Science? (an AAAS Subaru SB&F prize finalist), Bella and Bean (an SCBWI Golden Kite Honor) and Grumbles From The Forest; Fairy Tale Voices with a Twist (co-authored with Jane Yolen.) She gives poetry workshops, visits classrooms across the country, and speaks at conferences, retreats, libraries and schools to teachers, aspiring writers and students of all ages.Her books have received the Gold Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award as well as a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the year, and her work has been featured on Reading Rainbow and the PBS children’s show Between the Lions.

Her newest picture book is All Aboard! illus. by Mike Lowery (Knopf), and forthcoming is One Day, The End (Short, Very Short, Shorter-Than-Ever Stories), illus. by Fred Koehler (Boyds Mills Press), and Race Car Count, illus. by Michael Slack (Henry Holt.)She lives in the Midwest with her husband and her four young grandchildren live nearby.