Ann Knipp

Ann Knipp grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Being the youngest of five kids, she had to share a room with her oldest sister who loved to make up bedtime songs and stories. These special times with her big sister were not only treasured memories, they were also when the seeds of Ann's imagination were planted.

Growing up in the '70s meant Saturday morning cartoons and sugar cereal. Her favorites were Richie Rich, Flintstones, Jetsons and Tom & Jerry. All had the same simple animation with bold colors - a style she's adopted in her own illustrations. As a little girl, Ann wanted to write and draw funny stories like the ones she loved on t.v.

As a young mom, Ann shared her love of "All-Things-Disney" with her two children and husband. Singing the songs, reading the books, and watching the classics and new classics with her kids sparked another level of Ann's imagination. When Ann's daughter was 8 and her son was 4, a nightly bedtime routine included Ann telling stories about crazy characters in a land far away. Ann's daughter still yells at her mother today for making her laugh so hard she couldn't breath.

In the early 2000's, Ann teamed with her sister Lynn to create the first ever internet television studio for kids in Illinois. Kids View (KV) toured the Chicagoland area interviewing local businesses and events for their news and entertainment website KVTV.BiZ. KV even teamed up with Radio Disney to interview every Disney Channel Star as they visited Chicago. KV's Topic TV show aired online and on local cable. A second t.v. show was born when Ann's son and his friends wanted to talk sports. CK Sports was an espn-style sports talk show covering local to professional sports including "after-the-game" interviews with semi-professional players and coaches.

In addition to KV, Ann and Lynn worked on prototyping books together. Lynn began illustrating some of the bedtime stories Ann created and brought them to the local schools in a collection called "Schmiggly's Stories". The duo worked together to create an animated television show to pitch PBS based on the characters. When the t.v. show did not happen, Ann produced a radio show instead. As the Director of Children's programming for a local radio station, Ann wrote the scripts and songs for the show and hired professional voiceover artists to bring it all to life. "Schmiggly's Stories" ran on the radio for almost two years. The reviews described it as fun and entertaining "cartoon" you can listen to on the radio.

With her kids grown, Ann is focusing on bringing the rest of the characters in her imagination to life. She's created a personal mission of writing 1,000 children stories. Subsets of stories such as Pre-Zoo School Series, This Book Series, and Nathan's Ninja's are already in production. Her stories are illustrated in the same simple style as Ann's favorite cartoons and contain loveable characters to entertain (and sometimes teach) the readers.

Ann hopes to continue to create more stories over the next 10 years. So don't be surprised to find many more crazy, silly, fun and simple adventures to come as Ann's imagination comes to life in her road to 1,000 stories.