ABOUT RICHARDRichard Torrey was born in Los Angeles, CA. where he began doodling as soon as he could hold a crayon.In third grade, Richard showed a picture of a horse he had drawn to the legendary comic strip creator, Charles Schulz. Schulz drew Snoopy on the back of the picture, inspiring Richard to follow a similar career path. After graduating from Allegheny College with a BA in Psychology, Torrey created the first of two successful syndicated comic strips; Hartland (King Features), followed with the sports strip, PETE and CLETE (Creators Syndicate), both of which appeared in hundreds of newspapers around the world. Since then, Richard has been an author, illustrator, and editorial cartoonist, as well asthe creator of a top-selling line of greeting cards for Recycled Paper Greetings Inc. He has written and illustrated eight books, including the popular BEANS BAKER series for Random House, and the three book series: ALMOST, WHY?, and BECAUSE, for HarperCollins Publishers. He has illustrated dozens of books for Simon & Schuster, Golden Books, McGraw-Hill, and Scholastic. For the past two decades, Richard has also been on the faculty and taught classes at the Art League of Long Island.The son of Hockey Hall-of-Famer, Bill Torrey, Richard lives in Long Island, New York, with his wife and two children.