In Depth Bio

Meet Elyse DeNeige...

Elyse grew up in Maine. She was always drawn to the arts and storytelling. Throughout her childhood Elyse tried pottery, theater, dance, and picked up sewing and textile skills along the way. It was drawing and painting that remained constant through it all, and when it was time to find a college Elyse attended Savannah College of Art and Design on a cheerleading scholarship. The Georgia heat was just what she needed after a brutal couple winters in Maine.

In 2010, Elyse wrote her first children's book—Porter Runs Away—as a class project. The project only required a cover and 6 full color pages, but Elyse wrote her own original story and fully illustrated the whole book. The full color illustrations show the garden scenes, while the bulk of the adventure through the forest is in sepia, which technically counted as color for the class. The different color themes associated with the different parts of the story were a big hit not only with the professor, but also with the friends and family that saw the book. Elyse has steadily sold or gifted this book ever since, with some slight alterations along the way.

Now living in Vermont, Elyse focuses most of her "free time" on writing and illustrating new books. Elyse has two kids of her own, ages 6 and 4, and they are huge inspirations for her writing and characters. They showed an interest in dragons around the holidays, she wrote a book about a dragon who saves Christmas. They like to explore the wilderness and wear witch hats, she wrote a wilderness guidebook featuring kids playing witches. They get super excited about Halloween and dance around to songs about skeletons, she wrote a scavenger hunt book about a ghost and skeleton. Whimsy is always present, and there's a clear affinity for autumn and the outdoors. Although you could pull lessons from the stories, they are mostly for fun; colorful adventures with unique characters that provide a bit of escapism while remaining grounded.

What's next? Well, Piper the Peppermint Dragon has proven to be very popular, so there's a follow-up in the works. Crispin the Candy Corn Dragon takes the sugar dragon premise out for a day of autumnal activities. Crispin knits, bakes, picks apples, carves pumpkins, and jumps in the leaves. Eagle-eyed readers might even get a sighting of Piper trick or treating with Crispin.

In addition to children's books, Elyse is also a fine artist and graphic designer. She is available for watercolor commissions and specializes in themes similar to her books—nature and whimsy. Elyse comes from a family of avid outdoors folk. She loves to hike and forage. One thing she never really picked up was fly fishing, to her father's dismay, but she's found a way to bond with him still by specializing in painting fish and fly fishing flies. While sharing a love of water sports with her father, Elyse shares a love of gardening with her mother. Gnomes, flowers, insects, and produce are the subjects of many of the paintings in Elyse's portfolio. Elyse is also available for freelance graphic design including logos, merchandise design, menus, and more!