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Frank Serafini is an award winning children’s author and illustrator, a landscape photographer, former classroom teacher, guitarist, and an Associate Professor of Literacy Education and Children’s Literature at Arizona State University. Frank is a juried member of the Sonoran Arts League and the Arizona Arts Alliance.

For the past 25 years, Frank has been capturing images throughout the Southwest United States and around the world. An avid hiker and adventurer, In 1994, Frank created www.backcountryimages.com to showcase his photographic talents and share his love of the natural world. Frank’s journeys have taken him to New Zealand, Fiji, Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the Caribbean, and across America in search of inspiring images. Frank’s photography has been exhibited at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and at Arizona State University. His photography has been published in Plateau Journal and CERCA Magazine.

In 2006, Frank illustrated his first picturebook, Desert Seasons: A Year in the Mojave Desert, with images from the Mojave Desert. This book was selected as the Nevada Reading Week Featured Picture Book.

Recently, Frank has published a series of non-fiction picturebooks with Kids Can Press entitled Looking Closely. These “crop and reveal” picturebooks focus on various natural habitats, including; Desert, Forest, Shore, Pond, Rainforest and Garden. In 2009, Looking Closely Along the Shore was awarded an Honor Citation from the Society of School Librarians International for best non-fiction picturebook of the year, and won a prestigious Teacher’s Choice Award from the International Reading Association. Looking Closely Across the Desert has been nominated for a Grand Canyon Reader Award in 2011. Looking Closely Inside the Garden, and Looking Closely In the Rainforest have been nominated for a CYBILS award from the Children’s Literature Bloggers Association. All of Frank’s picturebooks have been honored by Bank Street Education’s featured non-fiction picturebooks of the year.