Joan Holub facts for kids

Joan Holub (born in Texas in 1956) is an amazing author and illustrator. She has created over 180 books for children! Sometimes, she uses fun secret names like Rita Book and Brad Bucks when she writes.

About Joan Holub

Joan Holub was born in Texas in 1956. She went to the University of Texas and earned a degree in fine arts. After college, she worked as an art director for eight years. She helped design cool graphics for different projects.

But Joan had a big dream: she wanted to work on children's books! So, she moved to New York City. There, she became an associate art director at Scholastic. She designed books for kids and worked with editors and illustrators.

In 1992, Joan illustrated her very first published children's book. Soon after, she started illustrating full-time. In the early 1990s, she also began writing her own stories. She sent them to publishers. In 1996, she sold her first two stories: A Spooky Lift-the-Flap Book and Pen Pals. Now, she writes books full-time!

Awards and Special Honors

Joan Holub's book, Mighty Dads, became a New York Times bestselling picture book. This means lots and lots of people bought it!

Here are some awards Joan Holub's books have received:

Fun Books by Joan Holub

Joan Holub has written many exciting books. Here are some of them:

• Zero the Hero is a picture book all about math! It stars the number Zero and his friends, numbers 1 through 9. When Roman numerals try to cause trouble, Zero gets to show how truly heroic he is!
• Little Red Writing is a clever take on the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. This story stars a red pencil! The pencil has to defeat the Wolf 2000, which is a pencil sharpener pretending to be the principal of Pencil School.
• Mighty Dads, illustrated by James Dean, is a picture book. In this book, dad construction vehicles teach their young construction vehicle children important growing-up skills.
• The Knights Before Christmas is a funny rhyming story. It's a parody of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Three knights try to fight off Santa Claus and his "dragons" (reindeer!). Scott Magoon created the illustrations for this book.
• This Little Artist: An Art History Primer is a board book published in 2019. Daniel Roode illustrated this book, which teaches young readers about art history.

Books Written with Suzanne Williams

Joan Holub has also teamed up with Suzanne Williams to write several popular series:

• The Goddess Girls is a middle-grade series for ages 8–12. Each book is about a different Greek goddess. You can read about Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite, Artemis, Medusa, Pandora, Pheme, and Cassandra. The stories take place at Mount Olympus, where they are students at the fictional Mount Olympus Academy. They learn subjects like beauty-ology, spell-ology, and hero-ology! The god Zeus is the principal of the academy. The first book, Athena the Brain, came out in 2010.
• Heroes in Training is an adventure series. It features young Olympians like Zeus and Poseidon. They have to face powerful Titans. This series also uses Greek mythology, but it's a different story world from The Goddess Girls. The first book, Zeus and the Thunderbolt of Doom, was published in 2012.
• Grimmtastic Girls is a series where each book is about a different female character from a fairy tale. You'll meet characters like Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and Snow White. The stories happen at a school called Grimm Academy. The first book, Cinderella Stays Late, was published in 2014.
• Little Goddess Girls is another series about characters from Greek mythology. These books are for younger readers, ages 6–9.