Eric Velasquez' awards include the John Steptoe / Coretta Scott King Award for new talent, a Pura Belpre Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a Carter G. Woodson Award. For Holiday House, he both wrote and illustrated Looking for Bongo, and he illustrated Ol' Clip-Clop: A Ghost Story by Patricia C. McKissack (Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Award Winner, Georgia Children's Book Award, Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year-Outstanding Merit) and New Shoes by Susan Lynn Meyer (Jane Addams Peace Association Children's Book Award, Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, New York State Reading Association Charlotte Award). The son of Afro-Puerto Rican parents who encouraged music and storytelling, Eric grew up in Spanish Harlem, New York. As a child, he loved superheroes, comics and drawing, much like the boy in Octopus Stew. He teaches illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology and lives in New York.