Jane Bre­skin Zal­ben was born in White­stone, Queens, New York City. She went to the High School of Music & Art in Harlem, grad­u­at­ed Queens Col­lege with a degree in fine arts, and went on to study print­mak­ing at the Pratt Graph­ics Cen­ter in Man­hat­tan while work­ing in pub­lish­ing. She has cre­at­ed over fifty award-win­ning books for chil­dren. Her most recent pic­ture book that she wrote and illus­trat­ed was on the Horn Book’s ​“Call­ing Calde­cott” list. Cur­rent­ly an abstract painter, she was a for­mer art direc­tor at Scribner’s and has taught writ­ing, illus­tra­tion, and design at the School of Visu­al Arts in New York City for eigh­teen years. Her acclaimed pic­ture books and nov­els explore issues of fam­i­ly, friend­ship, self-reliance, inner strength, peace and reli­gion, and the cre­ative process of music and art. Her work has been exhib­it­ed in libraries, gal­leries, and muse­ums. Her stu­dio is on Long Island. She splits her time between Port Wash­ing­ton and Long Island City, New York cause she has ​‘a thing’ with being not too far from water and nature, and yes, near major cities.