Beth Krommes author page

Beth Krommes biography

Beth Krommes is an illustrator of children’s picture books. She received the Caldecott Medal in 2009 for The House in the Night, written by Susan Marie Swanson. The House in the Night was published by HarperCollins on 5 May 2008, with Krommes as illustrator.

Krommes received a BFA degree in painting from Syracuse University and a MAT in art education from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She also spent a year at St Martin’s School of Art in London. Before illustrating full-time, she worked as a public school art teacher, a manager of a fine handcraft shop, and an art director for a computer magazine.

Krommes became interested in wood engraving in 1982, and her first illustrations were wood engravings. She later switched to scratchboard, a technique with a similar look. Her first children’s book was Grandmother Winter, written by Phyllis Root and published in 1999.

Her picture-book illustration work includes Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman, published by HarperCollins on 15 September 2006, and Blue on Blue by Dianne White, published by Beach Lane Books on 9 December 2014. She has also illustrated Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman.