Aliki

About Aliki

Aliki (Aliki Brandenberg, born Aliki Liacouras on 3 September 1929) is an American author and illustrator of children's books, known for clear, warmly drawn information books on subjects from dinosaurs and mummies to medieval life, many in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series.

She was born in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, to Greek immigrant parents, grew up in Philadelphia with Greek as her first language, and graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in 1951. After work in advertising and display art she married Franz Brandenberg in 1957 and moved to Switzerland, where she wrote and illustrated her first book, The Story of William Tell (1960). After the family settled in New York she made My Five Senses (1962), a book that changed the course of her career. The family moved to London in 1977 and lived there for about 35 years before returning to New York.

Her nonfiction includes Fossils Tell of Long Ago (1972), Corn Is Maize (1976), Digging Up Dinosaurs (1981), A Medieval Feast (1983) and How a Book Is Made (1986), plus Mummies Made in Egypt and A Weed Is a Flower, a picture biography of George Washington Carver. She also illustrated many books written by her husband, among them A Robber, A Robber and The Twelve Months. Across a career that began in 1960 she has more than 60 titles to her name.

For collectors: Digging Up Dinosaurs, Mummies Made in Egypt and Feelings were featured on the PBS series Reading Rainbow. Her honours include the New York Academy of Sciences Children's Book Award, the Prix du Livre pour Enfants (Geneva) and the 1991 Pennsylvania School Librarians' Association Award. She publishes under the single name Aliki, which is how her books are catalogued.