Erin E. Stead

Patience - The power to wait calmly with a happy spirit; avoiding extremes.

Erin E. Stead’s birthday is on December 27th.

Erin Stead is the Caldecott Medal winning illustrator of A Sick Day for Amos McGee, co-created with her husband, author and artist Philip Stead.

In her Caldecott Medal acceptance speech Erin revealed, “Before Philip introduced me to Amos McGee and his friends, I had completely lost the courage to make my own drawings.” … “At the end of the third year, I was unable to ignore the fact that without drawing, a part of me was missing.” She also said, “Drawing is an act that makes me feel vulnerable, but also one that completes me.”

Erin creates her illustrations using woodblock printing techniques and pencil. She believes e-books offer convenience but that there is an infinite beauty in the limitations of paper books that provide possibilities of our own imagination. “Books are simple. They must be felt,” she notes.

Erin and Philip Stead live in Ann Arbor, Michigan.