Before being named Distinguished Scholar of Children’s Literature at Marquette University, Barbara Elleman served as editor of the children’s section of Booklist magazine and then as editor-in-chief of Book Links, both published by the American Library Association. Prior to that, she worked as a school library media specialist and as a public librarian. She has been a judge for the American Book Awards among others and served on the 2000 Caldecott committee and twice on the Children’s Literature Legacy Award committee (2003 and 2009). In 1999, Putnam published her first book, Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories. Following that, she coauthored (with Russell Freedman) Holiday House: The First Sixty-Five Years (2000), and Virginia Lee Burton: A Life in Art (Houghton, 2002). In relocating to Massachusetts, Barbara donated her thousand-plus, often-signed picture book collection to The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, where her substantial reference collection about children’s literature resides in the Barbara Elleman Research Library, referred to as the BERL.