Michael Vuolo

Michael Vuolo writes children’s stories from the place he knows best: an elementary school classroom.

For more than a decade, he has taught first through fourth grade in New York City public schools, where he has seen how much can happen in the smallest moments. A new friendship. A bruised feeling. A brave first try. An unexpected laugh. Those are the moments his stories come from.

His stories do not ask children, or bears, to become perfect by the last page. They make room for stubborn opinions, mistakes, big feelings, and the laughter that often arrives before the lesson does.

He writes the Floppy and Fuzzy Bear series, about two best friends whose ordinary days turn funny, warm, and just a little bit silly. It begins with The Birthday and continues in The Peas and The Furstyle, with The Bearcade on the way.

He is also at work on Daisy and Sal, a second series about two Persian cats whose family life has a way of turning an ordinary trip out the door into an adventure.

He lives in northern New Jersey, where the bears keep finding new things to have opinions about.