Trinka Hakes Noble is the award-winning author of numerous picture books including The Orange Shoes (2007 National Parenting Publications Awards Honors Winner), The Scarlet Stockings Spy (2005 IRA Teachers' Choice), The Last Brother, and The Legend of the Cape May Diamond. Ms. Noble also wrote the ever-popular Jimmy's Boa series and Meanwhile Back at the Ranch, both featured on PBS's Reading Rainbow. Her many awards include ALA Notable Children's Book, Booklist Children's Editors' Choice, IRA-CBC Children's Choice, Learning: The Year's Ten Best, and several Junior Literary Guild Selections. Ms. Noble has studied children's book writing and illustrating in New York City at Parsons School of Design, the New School University, Caldecott medalist Uri Shulevitz's Greenwich Village Workshop, and at New York University. A member of the Rutgers University Council on Children's Literature, she was awarded Outstanding Woman 2002 in Arts and Letters in the state of New Jersey for her lifetime work in children's books. Ms. Noble currently lives in the historic Jockey Hollow area of Bernardsville, New Jersey. Jeannie enjoys visiting elementary schools around New England, sharing with both students and educators her original artwork, her love of the natural world and her excitement about the process of illustrating and writing children's books. Jeannie studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She lives in York, Maine, with her husband Greg, and their three children, Gregory, Sophie, and Lee. They share their home with a horse named Bailey, a wonderful Newfoundland, Cali, and two enormous cats (brothers) Macaroni and Tortellini.