Award-winning author-illustrator KARI PERCIVAL’s digital illustration style is rooted in the woodcuts she’s been carving and printing for more than two decades.  Kari earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master’s in Education and Environmental Science from Antioch University. Ecology has always been her favorite topic to teach, whether in the classroom or in the community garden. Kari lives with her husband and two children just outside Boston near a magical waterfall. On rainy days, she can be found rescuing earth worms out of puddles (because she just can’t walk by when they are wiggling for help.)

Awards:
• SCBWI Don Freeman Grant recipient, 2020
• NESCBWI Peter Davis Emerging Illustrator Scholarship recipient, 2019
• NESCBWI R. Michelson Galleries Emerging Artist Award recipient, 2019
• New England SCBWI Four-by-Four Mentorship, 2017

Visit Kari online at: www.karipercival.com
and www.instagram.com/karipercival

Kari’s Bookshelf:

Safe Crossing
by Kari Percival
Chronicle | 2024
• A Junior Library Guild (JLG) Gold Standard Selection

How To Say Hello To A Worm
by Kari Percival
PRH Rise |  2022

• Winner of the EZRA JACK KEATS WRITER AWARD
• A Dolly Parton Imagination Library selection, 2023
• an ALA Notable Children’s Book, 2023
•   School Library Journal, 31 Days, 31 Lists: 2022 Science and Nature Books for Kids : “Earliest readers will love this deep dive (sometimes literally!) into gardening, growing, and learning.”
•  a 2023 CLEL Bell Picture Book Awards for Early Literacy  “Talk” category award winner: “The book asks questions, provides practical guidance, and prompts conversations about the living creatures and plants all around us.”
• a Best Book of 2022, Children’s Book Committee of Bank Street College

★”In this deceptively simple, sparkling debut, a group of young children plant a garden in raised beds and watch it grow. Percival shows rather than tells, deploying a q&a format that involves the children’s exclamations as well as conversational instructions based in noticing. (“Look! Pea plants! See how they curl around your finger?” leads to a simple tutorial on building a support structure.) Digitally manipulated silkscreen images retain their handmade feel, showing successive views of children with varying abilities and skin tones, whose expressions reveal their absorption from the first spread: “How do you plant lettuce seeds?” Responding to the question via action, one child is shown sowing the seeds (“Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle”), another covers them with soil (“Pat, pat, pat”), and a third waters (“Now make some rain!”). Through action, the children learn to touch the insects they encounter (“gently, very gently”) and to judge a strawberry’s ripeness (“This one? Not yet. Too green”). Without picturing a single adult, Percival conveys the joy children can feel in working together, being outdoors, and eating food they’ve grown themselves—all with a fizzy immediacy. Back matter offers gardening tips and notes for adults on gardening with toddlers.”
—Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

“A great guide for growing young gardeners . . . . Eye-catching art and simple, clear text plant the seeds for a young gardener. ”— Kirkus Review

“This  gentle and engaging book for very young children captures the joy of connecting with nature and making things grow together.” —The Boston Globe