Jean-Thomas (Tomi) Ungerer was born on November 28th in Strasbourg, France. His home had a large number of books. "I was raised with a respect and love of books," he remembers. Max und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch, Der Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann, and L'histoire d'Alsace contée aux petits enfants by Hansi were some of the books on the Ungerer shelves.

At the American Cultural Center in Strasbourg, he became fascinated with American culture: Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, jazz, and the satirical drawings of The New Yorker and Saul Steinberg. Anxious to meet Mr. Steinberg, Ungerer arrived in New York in 1956 with 60 dollars in his pocket (he was 25). In 1957, his first book for children, The Mellops Go Flying was published by Harper & Row. His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Fortune, Harper's, and Holiday. He published three more Mellops books as well as Crictor (1958), The Three Robbers (1961), No Kiss for Mother (1973), and several other books for children. He and wife, Yvonne Wright, have three children and currently reside in Ireland. In February of 2003, Mr. Ungerer was awarded the Erich Kästner Prize in literature.