Lisa Brown (artist)
Lisa Michelle Brown (born January 12, 1972) is an American illustrator and writer whose books include "Picture the Dead," "How To Be," "The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming," and "Baby, Mix Me A Drink." She draws the "Three Panel Book Review" cartoon for the book section of the San Francisco Chronicle. She graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in 1993, and an MS in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1998. She lives in San Francisco with her son and her husband, Daniel Handler. Brown has used  the pseudonym Sarah "Pinkie" Bennett, at least for illustration. Recent projects. "Vampire Boy's Good Night" is a picture book about a small vampire boy and a little witch. On a cold autumn night, they head out in search of ″real children.″ "Picture the Dead" is a traditional ghost story with a visual twist. Co-written with Adele Griffin, the visual clues allow the reader to unravel the mystery in step (or ahead of) the narrator. It's not a graphic novel and not an illustrated chapter book, but a novel in which the illustrations are an integral part of  the whole. It's a book about dealing with the visual clues, but at the same time infused with the more traditional narrative around each image. The illustrations are based on old daguerreotypes and albumen prints of anonymous sitters, culled from the Online Prints and Photographs Reading Room of the Library of Congress. The background patterns are based on actual Victorian designs. The book is set in Brookline, Massachusetts during the American Civil War. Haunted by the recent deaths of her twin brother and fiancé, seventeen-year-old Jennie Lovell forges an unlikely friendship with a Spiritualist photographer who helps  her to expose tragic family secrets.