About the author, Rebekah Prince Bergeron
Many of Rebekah's earliest memories are of spending hours reading and creating stories to entertain herself. Once she learned to write, she began to fill notebooks with original stories and poems. Rebekah would join her mother, who was a librarian, attending bookseller conferences and author luncheons. These experiences fostered Rebekah's love of words, while hours of browsing the children's room developed an appreciation for picture books. Although being an author was never a career goal, Rebekah always sensed she would one day write a children's book.
After working as a long-term substitute teacher, Rebekah worked at a shelter for at-risk youth. This work led her to become a foster parent. The youth and children she met in foster care helped inspire The Worry Tree Is Waiting. Once her own children were grown, Rebekah returned to teaching. She spent several years as a STEM instructor at the elementary level and currently loves teaching fourth grade in southern NH where a favorite time of the school day is reading aloud to her students.
Rebekah was born in Newfoundland, Canada but grew up in the US. She currently lives in seacoast NH with her husband, Tom. Their daughter, Kate, graduated from college in 2015 and currently lives in Burlington, VT. Their son, Joe, is in his second year of college.
About the illustrator, Sandy McDermott:
Every artist has something in their life that stirred them to do what they do. Sandy McDermott's earliest memory of making art that mattered is a bookmark design competition sponsored by the school library when she was in first grade. Using crayons on construction paper she drew an image of Dr. Doolittle with his animals. Her design won! That experience stirred something inside and began a life-long commitment to both art and animals, and ultimately a career in Natural Science Illustration.
Sandy McDermott, a native of maritime Canada, was raised in New England and attended Salem State College (now called Salem State University) where she received a BA in Art. She went on to receive a Graduate Certificate in Natural Science Illustration from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Some years ago she took to watercolors with serious intent, experimenting in the medium and immersing in a creative process she likes to call “purposeful play”. The medium and course of discovery pushed her artistic approach to a looser, more carefree and uninhibited way of creating.
The Worry Tree is Waiting project required Sandy to go back to her roots a bit. She strived to achieve an easy balance between reality and fantasy, with an obvious emphasis towards reality, in order to create a cheerful, warm and happy environment in which a child can imagine their self relaxing, feeling safe and just “being”.
She is the illustrator of several books, numerous t-shirt designs, logos, trail signs, brochures, murals and magazine articles. Sandy has been teaching and sharing her passion for drawing the natural world since 1998 and has been freelancing as an illustrator since 1992. This will be her first children’s book.
Past and present clients include Bryce Canyon and Yosemite National Parks, Sierra National Forest, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, California State University-Fresno, Massachusetts Audubon Society, Harvard Museum of Natural History, University Press of New England and Travel & Nature. Her commissioned works are spread across the country. Sandy now lives in the coastal New Hampshire area with her husband Sean and a dog named Oreo. Their daughter Kelsey spent a year after graduating high school traveling abroad and is now attending college. The art bug has bitten her, too….
Every artist has something in their life that stirred them to do what they do. Sandy McDermott's earliest memory of making art that mattered is a bookmark design competition sponsored by the school library when she was in first grade. Using crayons on construction paper she drew an image of Dr. Doolittle with his animals. Her design won! That experience stirred something inside and began a life-long commitment to both art and animals, and ultimately a career in Natural Science Illustration.
Sandy McDermott, a native of maritime Canada, was raised in New England and attended Salem State College (now called Salem State University) where she received a BA in Art. She went on to receive a Graduate Certificate in Natural Science Illustration from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Some years ago she took to watercolors with serious intent, experimenting in the medium and immersing in a creative process she likes to call “purposeful play”. The medium and course of discovery pushed her artistic approach to a looser, more carefree and uninhibited way of creating.
The Worry Tree is Waiting project required Sandy to go back to her roots a bit. She strived to achieve an easy balance between reality and fantasy, with an obvious emphasis towards reality, in order to create a cheerful, warm and happy environment in which a child can imagine their self relaxing, feeling safe and just “being”.
She is the illustrator of several books, numerous t-shirt designs, logos, trail signs, brochures, murals and magazine articles. Sandy has been teaching and sharing her passion for drawing the natural world since 1998 and has been freelancing as an illustrator since 1992. This will be her first children’s book.
Past and present clients include Bryce Canyon and Yosemite National Parks, Sierra National Forest, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, California State University-Fresno, Massachusetts Audubon Society, Harvard Museum of Natural History, University Press of New England and Travel & Nature. Her commissioned works are spread across the country. Sandy now lives in the coastal New Hampshire area with her husband Sean and a dog named Oreo. Their daughter Kelsey spent a year after graduating high school traveling abroad and is now attending college. The art bug has bitten her, too….
