Author-illustrator Mary Ann Fraser has published more than sixty fiction and nonfiction picture books and early readers for children. Long before her professional career began, she wrote, illustrated, and assembled her own books as early as the first grade. Although she did not own many picture books as a child, her family made frequent trips to the public library where Fraser headed for the nonfiction section. “My early reading was kind of an eclectic mix,” she says, including falconry, biology, and how to speak Arabic. When she read something particularly captivating she said, “I want to write a book like that,” rather than “I want to read another book like that.”