about karen beil

(rhymes with orange peel.)

I was born in Massachusetts, grew up in Connecticut, and had to learn to spell difficult state names right at the start. So it was with great relief that I moved to New York (easier to spell and still close to New England) where I now live with my husband.

Karen and her grandma

Over the years our home has been home or home-away-from-home to various dogs, hamsters, fishes, turtles, frogs, and a cat. Last winter bluebirds moved into the house outside my studio window. The “for-rent” sign went up in the spring when they finished the holly berries and moved out. Days later, a pair of wrens moved in to raise their chicks. Boy, could that daddy bird sing.

Karen and her mother

I’ve been writing and doodling all my life, except a couple years in the beginning when I thought crayons were a food group (proteins, carbohydrates, and crayola). Mid-way through elementary school after considerable struggle, I caught my love of reading—and puppets—from my mother, a school librarian. My parents were introduced by two children’s book illustrators—their sisters! My father, at 95, recites poetry and has a ready supply of jokes, stories, and witticisms.

By the time I went to college, I wanted to read all the time. So I majored in English literature and magazine journalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Journalism. After graduating, I wrote articles about fires, murders, and robberies, and interviewed judges and one notorious conman as a news reporter for Chicago’s legendary City News Bureau. This was a wire service (a one-city version of the Associated Press) where many writers including Kurt Vonnegut got their hard-knocks start as cub reporters (we were called the “City News kids”). It’s where I learned to read upside down. To ask tough questions. And to meet deadlines.

Since then, I’ve been an editor, science writer, magazine freelancer, publications director, and now I write for my most favorite audience—children. I love to create books that bring kids and their families together talking, playing, laughing, and learning—and of course reading.