About Eric Carle
Eric Carle (1929-2021) was one of America’s leading children’s book illustrators and authors. Author of more than seventy books, his picture book career started when Bill Martin Jr invited him to create the illustrations for Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? That book went on to sell millions of copies worldwide and Eric soon began writing and illustrating his own books, eventually creating the bestselling classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Born in the United States, Eric also spent many of his early years in Germany where he studied typography and graphic art at the Academy of Applied Art in Stuttgart.Carle was the recipient of many honors including the American Library Association’s Children’s Literature Legacy Award and the Original Art Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators. In addition to writing and illustrating books of his own, he also collaborated on several others, including Bill Martin Jr's Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Why Noah Chose the Dove, and the Eric Carle and Friends’ What’s Your Favorite picture book series. The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which Carle and his wife Bobbie founded, opened in Amherst, Massachusetts in 2002.
About Fred Berman
Fred Berman is a five-time winner of the AudioFile Earphone Award for Audiobook Narration and the recipient of the 2013 Audie Award for narration in Spy the Lie. He has read a number of audiobooks for young listeners, including Judy Blume’s Soupy Saturdays with The Pain & The Great One and Andrew Clements’s The Last Holiday Concert. He has also narrated the audiobooks for Robert Kirkman’s popular series, The Walking Dead.Berman is an accomplished actor of both the stage and screen as well, performing on Broadway as Timon in The Lion King and off-Broadway in Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and King Lear. On television, Berman has had roles on NBC’s hit series Smash as well as All My Children and Law and Order. He lives in New York City.
About Melinda Sewak
Melinda Sewak (she/her/hers) is an Emmy-nominated story chaser, whose rich, lyrical, and welcoming voice brings life to an ever-growing cast of characters. Her facility with language is deeply immersive and has added dimension to 25+ audiobooks, ranging from children’s fiction to YA to romantic comedy to fantasy. Melinda has been fine-tuning her ability to convey the truth and the comedy in every story by drawing on her own diverse life experiences as a Black, queer creator – having grown up as a first-generation Haitian-American, graduated with a BA in Theater Studies from Yale University, toured as a jazz a cappella singer, worked as a firefighter and rescuer, conducted and published critical care and emergency medicine research, attended medical school, coached as a certified personal trainer, served as a Shakespeare teaching artist, worked in IT as a data and business analyst – and professionally acting on stage and screen. While varied, the through-line has always been a love for people and storytelling – and an always-present desire, evident in the rhythm and curiosity that exude from her voice, to discover, to share, and to connect with story and listener alike.
