Ottawa County Reads! September 2023 with Pete the Cat authors James and Kimberly Dean

We are so excited to be hosting a county wide event to encourage literacy!

Join us on Sunday, September 24 at the Performing Arts Center at Port Clinton High School to hear from James and Kimberly Dean, authors and illustrators of Pete the Cat. As an incentive to get people in the doors and to get people reading, we will be giving Pete the Cat books to the first 200 attendees.

Students of Port Clinton and Danbury were sent home with flyers promoting the event. Extra flyers for families in other districts are available at the library, so spread the word!

This program was made possible by the Libraries Accelerating Reading Grant from the Ohio Department of Education.

James Dean is the original creator and illustrator of Pete the Cat. He is a self-taught artist originally from Fort Payne, Alabama. His passion for drawing became apparent at a young age, and as a child, you could find James drawing his favorite characters like Snoopy and Yogi Bear. James Dean’s art has been sold in more than ninety galleries and shops across the United States. He has devoted his paintings to Pete the Cat for fifteen years and turned his natural love for cats into his life’s work. James published his first book, The Misadventures of Pete the Cat, a history of his artwork, in 2006, and he illustrated his first self-published children’s book, Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, in 2008. There are now almost 100 published Pete the Cat titles with more coming out all the time.

Kimberly Dean is a children’s author, artist, and yoga enthusiast best known as a NYT bestselling author and co-parent of children’s book character Pete the Cat. Before fulfilling her dream of becoming a full-time author and artist, she worked for the State of Georgia, leaving the Governor’s Press Office in 1998 to pursue her art. In 2004, she began collaborating with fellow artist James Dean to create children’s books about Pete the Cat. The Misadventures of Pete the Cat, a coffee table book of James’s art, was released in 2006. Her dreams of becoming a published children’s book author became a reality in 2013 with the release of her first children’s book, Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses. She has now written many of the Pete the Cat books, as well as started another series starring her own characters Willow and Oliver.