Biography

Matthew Holm is the New York Times-bestselling author and illustrator of more than 50 books for children. He is the co-creator of a number of graphic novels with his sister, Jennifer, including the Babymouse, Squish, and Sunny Side Up series.

Matthew grew up outside of Philadelphia, Pa. As the youngest of five kids, he inherited the hand-me-down books and comics of all of his siblings (and his dad, who loved Prince Valiant and Hagar the Horrible). He started drawing his own comic strips in middle school and never stopped looking for ways to write stories and make comics.

In high school, Matthew mentored under the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tony Auth, and while at Penn State University, he drew editorial cartoons for The Daily Collegian. Although Matthew majored in English, he used every spare moment to take art classes and graduated with a BA in English and Honors in Art.

After college, Matthew moved to New York City, where he crashed on his sister Jennifer’s couch while interning at Country Living Magazine. Not only did this mark the start of an eight-year career for him as a writer and editor at the home decorating magazine, it also laid the groundwork for his decades-long collaboration with his sister.

While living in New York City, Matthew assisted Jennifer with copy-editing and fact checking on some of her early novels, and later collaborated with her on comics that would appear in her book Middle School Is Worse than Meatloaf. They also came up with the initial ideas for Babymouse, and pitched the story to publishers for three years before it was finally acquired by Random House Children’s Books. Babymouse: Queen of the World! appeared on shelves in 2005 as one of the very first graphic novels made specifically for children. Today, there are dozens of books in the Babymouse series, and the stories about the plucky cartoon mouse with a big imagination have been translated into many languages and even won an Eisner award.

In 2011, Matthew and Jennifer published Squish: Super Amoeba, the first in a series of silly, science-focused graphic novels about a microscopic world of germs that looks a lot like our own. Squish was later made into an animated TV series that debuted in the US on HBO Max and is now streaming on YouTube.

Matthew and Jennifer launched their next graphic novel series in 2015 with Sunny Side Up, a story inspired by their childhood growing up in Pennsylvania in the 1970s. The New York Times-bestselling series from Scholastic Graphix currently has 6 volumes and counting.

Matthew has also collaborated with Jennifer on picture book series like The Evil Princess vs. The Brave Knight (about a brother and sister who do not get along) and My First Comics, a series of board books about weather characters and their emotions. The books I’m Grumpy and I’m Sunny inspired Matthew and Jennifer to produce their own animated series, Sunny and Grumpy Cloud, which is streaming on YouTube.

In addition, Matthew co-wrote and illustrated the middle-grade novel Marvin and the Moths—about a boy who discovers giant, superintelligent moths living in his attic—with Jonathan Follett, who has been his friend since middle school.

Matthew lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife and dog, though they are all currently spending some time in Italy.

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