Caren Loebel-Fried is an author and second-generation artist, having learned the art of block printing from her mother. Her love of nature and legends brought her to Hawai'i where she finds unlimited sources of inspiration and education in the forest, around the volcano, and in the Archives of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Her many awards for art, literature, and Hawaiian culture include the American Folklore Society's Aesop prize for Children's Folklore, and the Hawai'i Book Publishers Association's Ka Palapala Po`okela Awards.Caren is the author and illustrator of several books of Hawaiian legends including Hawaiian Legends of the Guardian Spirits, Hawaiian Legends of Dreams, Lono and the Magical Land Beneath the Sea, and Legend of the Gourd. Her friendship with Nona Beamer bore the fruit of two books, Naupaka and Pua Polu, the Pretty Blue Hawaiian Flower, and Caren created art for Tree of Souls, the Mythology of Judaism, by Howard Schwartz. Caren is currently working on a new picture book based on a legend of the origins of making kapa (cloth) in Hawai'i.