Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes is an award-winning American author and illustrator of books for children. He has been writing and illustrating picture books and novels for thirty years.

Kevin Henkes is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wrote his first book when he was nineteen years old during his freshman year in college. The debut book All Alone, was published in 1981 and was about a child describing the pleasure of occasional loneliness. This theme is common in many of Henkes' later books.

Today he is the author of many award-winning picture books and novels.
Kevin Henkes has written and illustrated around fifty critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, early readers, and novels in his career thus far. His most notable works are Chrysanthemum (1991) and Wemberly Worried (2001).

In many of Henkes' books, the main characters are mice. He also writes middle-grade fiction.

As an illustrator, Kevin Henkes won the Caldecott Medal for Kitten's First Full Moon (2004). Two of his books were Newbery Medal Honor Books, Olive's Ocean in 2004, and The Year of Billy Miller in 2014. His picture book Waiting was named both a 2016 Caldecott Honor Book and a Geisel Honor Book.

“Books are often the first exposure to art that children have. Keeping that in mind urges me to make the very best books possible. I know how important the books from my childhood were (and are) to me. Without them, I might not be a writer and artist today,” says the author.

Kevin Henkes lives in Madison with his wifey, artist Laura Dronzek, and their two children.

Photo by Michelle Corpora / kevinhenkes.com