Bio

Anne Sibley O’Brien is a children’s book creator who has illustrated twenty-five picture books, including Jamaica’s Find and five other Jamaica books by Juanita Havill (Houghton Mifflin) and Jouanah: A Hmong Cinderella (Shen’s Books). She has collaborated with Margy Burns Knight on five books: Talking Walls; Who Belongs Here? An American Story; Welcoming Babies and Talking Walls: The Stories Continue (all Tilbury House, Publishers); and Africa Is Not A Country (Millbrook Press). In 1997 they received the National Education Association Author-Illustrator Human & Civil Rights Award for their body of work.

O’Brien has also illustrated a number of her own books, including two retellings of Korean tales, The Princess and the Beggar (Scholastic), and the just released The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea (Charlesbridge), a picture book in graphic novel form.

O’Brien’s passion for multiracial, multicultural, and global subjects was kindled by her experience of being raised bilingual and bicultural in South Korea as the daughter of medical missionaries. She attended Mount Holyoke College where she majored in Studio Art, and spent her junior year abroad at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, Korea. In addition to creating books, she has been involved for many years in diversity education and leadership training. She is also a writer and performer, and has created a one-woman show entitled “White Lies: one woman’s quest for release from the enchantment of whiteness” (http://www.WhiteLies.ws). She lives with her husband on an island in Maine, and is the mother of two grown children.