ABOUT the AUTHOR
Yona Diamond Dansky is a lifelong educator and artist. She has an unrelenting passion for empowering teachers and parents to understand and meet the emerging needs of children and youth to scaffold their development and well-being. Yona began her career in special education as a teacher of Deaf students; she has been a teacher, program coordinator and administrator, and worked in city and suburban districts in the Philadelphia area. She is a mother and grandmother, with many stories to share when she is not doing art work, Israeli dancing, sewing or swimming.
Mooshu Worries is her first children's book, and she is both author and illustrator. It was inspired by her three-year-old grandson's journey through his mom's --Yona's daughter's--diagnosis and successful cancer treatment. The stories written for children in this setting seemed too personal and upsetting to him, and it appeared much more comforting to view the upheaval from a little distance, through the eyes of a pet. Almost every family has been touched in some way by serious illness and can relate to this story.
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Wishes and Knishes is loosely based on how she learned to make her mother's family famous knish recipe on a snowy day. Art work is done digitally.
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Link to podcast about the backstory of Wishes and Knishes
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See a portfolio of Yona's art work here.
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Links to interviews:
https://iamemilysun.com/mooshuworries/
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