When not researching state reptiles and outsider art, Gabrielle takes many (MANY) photo booth photos with her children. Always with effects.
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ABOUT
SHORT-ISH AUTHOR BIO
Gabrielle Balkan is best known for non-fiction books that delight readers ages 0 - 12 with curious and essential facts about the United States and animal record-breakers. Her books include four titles in The 50 States series; five titles in the Book of Bones series; Georgia O’Keefe: She Saw the World in a Flower; and, brand new in the summer of 2023: Meet the Megafauna: Get to Know 20 of the Largest Animals to Ever Roam the Earth and What a Map Can Do. She lives, works, and rides bikes in the Hudson Valley with her twin 8th graders and a writer husband. She/her.
Hear how to pronounce her name at teachingbooks.net
Find her online at @gabriellebalkan and www.gabriellebalkan.com.
Find her books at bookshop.org.
LONG + RAMBLING BIO
Gabrielle Balkan (she/her) is a writer and editor, mostly of children's books, living in the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn, New York, mostly with her husband, daughters, and orange cat. She once wrote a poem.
Previously, she was studied English and education at Barnard College in New York, New York. Thesis topic? Mrs Dalloway. Prior, she was a Broad Ripple (go Rockets!) high school student in Indianapolis, Indiana. Favorite subject? Shoup-about: an independent writing course with the author of Looking for Jack Kerouac. Before, she was in junior high at Inter Community School in Zurich, Switzerland. Favorite reading? Everything by Diana Wynne Jones, especially Dogsbody. And first, she was born to an English teacher and Chemist, right around Christmastime, on an Army base in Augusta, Georgia. Delivery cost? $12.53.
Gabrielle has sold posters to students in colleges between Rochester, NY and Rome, GA; taught 9th grade summer school students to write obituaries for Romeo and Juliet characters; kept track of photo shoot budgets for WWD and W Magazine; data entried; sat diners; pulled weeds; read law texts to the blind; was a book buyer for the Scholastic Reading Clubs, a commissioning editor for Scholastic Paperbacks, and the Director of Communications for City and Country School. She should not be hired to copy edit. She's quite bad at that—she gets too caught up in the plot!
The 50 States, The 50 States Activity Book, 50 States Fun Facts, and 50 Cities were written in coffee shops, bookstores, and libraries in Brooklyn, Germantown, Mishawaka, South Bend, Tubac, and Tucson; illustrated by Sol Linero in Buenos Aires; edited and designed by the Wide-Eyed team in London, England; and printed in China.
Book of Bones, Book of Flight, and Whose Bones? An Animal Guessing Game was written with the help of animal experts in Alaska, California, and Virginia; illustrated by Sam Brewster in London; edited and designed by the Phaidon team in London and New York City; and printed in China. Up next: Book of Dinosaurs!
Georgia O’Keeffe: She Saw the World in a Flower was illustrated by Josy Bloggs in London; edited and designed by the DK team in London; and published in consultation with The Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 21, 2021.
Megafauna: Discover the Giant Animals That Once Roamed the Earth will be illustrated by Quang & Lien from their Saigon studio; edited and designed by the Workman team in New York City, and published in September 2023.
Gabrielle is also the author of The Dog Rules and The Dog Rules: A New Pig in Town, written as the somewhat temperamental parrot, Coco LaRue; both illustrated by Kyla May, both written in Brooklyn.
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