About

About the Author and Illustrator

Christopher Eck was raised in Atlanta and graduated from St. Pius X Catholic High School. After a visit to New Orleans during Carnival his senior year, he decided to forgo scholarships at several other fi ne institutions of higher education located in much less interesting places so that he could pay to attend Loyola University, where he remarkably managed to graduate with a major in History and minor in Communications, "on time and on budget."

He subsequently attended graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he received a master’s degree in History and Historical Archaeology and later earned a law degree from the University of Miami. For more than 20 years, he has somehow combined his background in history, archaeology and law into a successful career in historic preservation that has allowed him to work on projects from way up in New England to way over to California and then way down in the Southeast and even way, way down to the Virgin Islands.

Throughout his peregrinetic life, Chris has maintained active interests in art and writing. He served as an editorial cartoonist, columnist and contributor for award-winning high school and graduate school newspapers and as a staff artist for departments at Loyola University and the University of Massachusetts Boston. His archaeological illustrations have been used in professional reports and publications. He has published articles in newspapers that include the South Shore News (Boston), The Miami Herald, Miami Today and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, as well as in professional journals and magazines such as the Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society, South Florida History, The Florida Anthropologist, Preservation Today, CRM, Cultural Quarterly, Broward Legacy and Tequesta. He is a contributing author for the book, Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods.

He serves as a member of Loyola University’s Monroe Library Visiting Committee and hopes to visit New Orleans – more frequently than he does currently – for its revitalizing "food and music" vacations. He lives in Georgia with his very, very lovely wife, Tracy, his two very, very beautiful children, Lexie and Griffin, and with Toby, their very, very large and very, very old Maine Coon (who is not blue). This is his first children’s book.