Curious George and the Birthday Surprise

Martha Weston was born in North Carolina in 1947 and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan and after graduation, moved to San Francisco. Once there, she earned a living by doing freelance work on paste ups, animation ink and paint and illustration.

The first book Weston illustrated was I Hate Mathematics in 1975. The first book she wrote and illustrated was Peony's Rainbow which was published in 1981. Since then, Weston has illustrated the Nate the Great Series of stories from Delacorte Press, as well as the Curious George Series for Houghton Mifflin. Over the course of her career, Weston has illustrated over 60 books for children, 11 of which she also wrote. In may of 2003 she published her first children's novel, Act I, Act II, Act Normal.

One of the things that made Weston so unique among illustrators was that she was colorblind. She managed to work around that by carefully labeling her paints and having her colleagues check her work.

Martha West died September 4, 2003 of heart disease. She was 56 years old.

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