Buster hoped there would be juicy steaks or fancy cheeses or spicy sausages in the box. But inside was something Buster did not want. And that something was a cat named Betty.

Denise Fleming has written and illustrated many children’s books, including In the Tall, Tall Grass, Shout! Shout It Out!, and Sleepy, Oh So Sleepy. She won a Caldecott Honor for In the Small, Small Pond. Denise published her first painting in the third grade, when she started taking classes at the Toledo Museum of Art and one of her paintings was chosen to be the cover of a teacher’s magazine. She now works primarily with paper, by pouring colored paper pulp through hand-cut stencils. She lives in Toledo, Ohio.