Orangutan Tongs by Jon Agee

Jon Agee, the author-illustrator-playwright-librettist-palindromist, grew up along the Hudson River in Nyack, New York. As a kid, he created picture books, detective comics, and flipbooks made out of train ticket stubs. In high school, he spent an inordinate amount of time in the art room. In college, at the Cooper Union in New York City, he studied painting, dabbled in animation, and made an art film. Soon after graduating, in 1981, he began getting his first books published.

He is probably best known for his fourth book, The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau, in which a mysterious painter's pictures come to life, wreaking havoc in turn-of-the-century Paris. His other books, featuring canine professors, forgotten astronauts, and guffawing grumps, are at times quirky, nonsensical, satiric, and always humorous. Their sophisticated wit appeals to kids and adults alike.

Somewhere along the line, Jon became obsessed with creating words and phrases that read the same backwards and forwards. The result was his first book of palindromes, Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog! Its companion volume, So Many Dynamos!, temporarily relieved Jon of his peculiar compulsion.

Jon has also written the book and lyrics to two musicals, B.O.T.C.H. and Flies in the Soup, which were performed at the TADA! theater in New York. He would happily continue to pursue this enterprise if he didn't need to eat.

In his spare time, Jon does a lot of doodling; or he might write a tongue twister, or an anagram, or a poem. Sometimes he draws a cartoon that gets published in The New Yorker magazine, which pleases him very much.