Ashley Wolff

About Ashley Wolff

Ashley Wolff (Jenifer Ashley Wolff, born 26 January 1956) is an American author and illustrator of picture books, best known for her pictures for Joseph Slate's Miss Bindergarten series, which began with Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten in 1996.

Born in Boston and raised in Vermont, she took a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1979, then worked as a staff artist on newspapers in Middlebury, Vermont, and Mill Valley, California. Her first book was A Year of Birds (1984), and has also painted trompe l'oeil murals. Her techniques range from linoleum-block prints to watercolour, gouache and ink. She is a visiting associate professor in the children's book programmes at Hollins University and lives and works in Vermont.

Her own books include The Bells of London (1985), A Year of Beasts (1986), Come with Me (1990) and Stella and Roy (1993). For other writers she illustrated Robert Louis Stevenson's Block City (1988), Raffi's Baby Beluga (1990), Margaret Wise Brown's Little Donkey Close Your Eyes (1995) and Charlotte Zolotow's Some Things Go Together (1999). The Miss Bindergarten books with Joseph Slate continued with titles on the 100th day of kindergarten (1997), staying home (2000), a field trip (2001) and a circus (2002). Her book count is given as more than 40 on her own site and more than 70 by Hollins University.

For collectors: A Year of Birds was an ALSC Notable Children's Book (1984). Block City was a Notable Children's Trade Book in Social Studies and won Parenting magazine's first Reading-Magic Award (both 1988), and Come with Me was a Child Study Association Children's Book of the Year (1991).