Joan Holub

Joan Holub is an author of books for children.^[1]

Among her many works,^[2] the most widely available is Breakout at the Bug Lab (2001), held by over 1200 WorldCat Libraries.^[3]

Personal life

Holub graduated from college in Texas with a fine arts degree and then freelanced as an art director at a graphic design firm for eight years.

She dreamed of working in children's books, so she moved to New York City and became associate art director in Scholastic trade books where she designed books for children and worked with editors and illustrators.

She illustrated her first published children's book in 1992 and soon began illustrating full-time. She began completing manuscripts and mailing them out to publishers in the early 1990s. In 1996, she sold her first two manuscripts: A Spooky Lift-the-Flap Book and Pen Pals. Now she writes full-time, having written and illustrated over 130 children's books.

Selected bibliography

• Doll Hospital, a series in which dolls communicate their stories, giving a doll's eye view of historical events. The first book, Tatiana Comes to America, was published in 2002.
• Ant Hill, a holiday-themed series for early readers, illustrated by Will Terry, featuring anthropomorphic ants. The first book, More Snacks! A Thanksgiving Play, was published in 2006.
• The Knights Before Christmas, a rhyming parody of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas in which three knights try to fight off the "invading" Santa Claus and his "dragons". Illustrations by Scott Magoon.^[4]

Written with Suzanne Williams

• The Goddess Girls, a series in which each book is about Greek goddesses: Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite, Artemis, Medusa, Pandora, Pheme, and Cassandra. The setting is at Mount Olympus, where they are students at fictional Mount Olympus Academy. School has various subjects such as beauty-ology, spell-ology, garden-ology, hero-ology and many more. In charge is the god of all gods, ruler of Mount Olympus, absent-minded father of Athena, husband of a fly, and of course cheery and supporting yet deeply understanding principal of the Academy, the god Zeus. The first book, Athena the Brain, was published in 2010.
• Heroes in Training, an adventure series featuring the young Olympians, Zeus, Poseidon and others, as they confront the tyrannical Titans. Although also drawing on Greek mythology, the series is in a different "universe" from The Goddess Girls. The first book, Zeus and the Thunderbolt of Doom, was published in 2012.
• Grimmtastic Girls, a series in which each book is about a female main character from a fairy tale: Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, etc. The setting is a co-educational school called Grimm Academy. The first book, Cinderella Stays Late, was published in 2014.

References