Mike Kitchens & Suzy Lang. Mike Kitchens is a storyteller, artist, and (in his best role ever!) grandfather whose greatest joy has been seeing, experiencing, and sharing our world once again through the eyes of his family's and friends' children. After a successful career in business and consulting, Mike is living his dream helping other families capture special memories of their loved ones through his art. And now, through his books, Mike is fulfilling a lifetime promise to himself that he would find a way to combine his love of storytelling, artistic creation, and the wonderous imagination of children, to support and encourage them in their life's adventures. Mike's books are filled with color and wonderfully diverse and unique (but somehow familiar and very comfortable) characters, whose adventures are shared in rhymes, with stories that carry some of those same underlying themes that served him so well in his own life and career such as: choosing to be positive, valuing the differences in others, and working together. Mike believes that with these practices, we can make magic happen; and each of us can do, and can be, more than we might see.
Suzy Lang is an abstract artist, cyclist, and skier, following 20 years of operating in a partnership, owning, and managing a DoD consulting firm. Suzy's inspiration for working with the highly talented artist / illustrator Mike Kitchens was to create a series of beautifully illustrated picture books with unique and fun-loving characters that convey stories to children, that contain all the elements of any successful relationship (business, manager, friend, etc.). Simple adventures in a beautiful forest, filled with all types of characters, convey the value of inclusiveness, facing and overcoming challenges, teamwork, accomplishment, and personal growth to young children. These fun-loving and diversely talented characters embody the same attitudes and behaviors in their everyday adventures, as any "truly" successful team. Suzy explores new techniques for artistic expression, adding her love of color, adventure, and furry creature character peculiarities, to this series of highly illustrated children's books. She thoroughly enjoys the outdoors and is fascinated by the immense spectrum of colors and beauty God has created for us.