Christy Hale author page

Christy Hale biography

Christy Hale is a children’s writer, illustrator, designer, art director and educator. She earned a B.A. in Fine Arts and a Master’s in Teaching at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and then worked as an art educator. She later studied design and illustration at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Hale taught at the New York Center for Book Arts and worked as an adjunct professor in the Communication Design department at Pratt Institute while also working in children’s book publishing as a designer and art director. She later developed and taught an online Writing for Picture Books course through the illustration department at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Hale has illustrated more than 30 books and has written some of them. Her books as both writer and illustrator include The East-West House: Noguchi’s Childhood in Japan, Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building, Water Land: Land and Water Forms around the World, Todos Iguales/All Equal: Un Corrido de/A Ballad of Lemon Grove and Out the Door.

Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building was published by Lee & Low Books on 1 October 2012. Hale wrote and illustrated the 40-page informational picture book, which uses concrete poems, child-made structures and photographs of modern and contemporary architecture.

Hale illustrated Antsy Ansel: Ansel Adams, a Life in Nature, written by Cindy Jenson-Elliott. She also illustrated The Cambodian Dancer: Sophany’s Gift of Hope, written by Daryn Reicherter and translated by Bophal Penh; that book won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award Silver Medal for Non-Fiction — Picture Book.