• Age: 6 to 8
• Grade: 1 to 3
• Reading age: 6 to 8

Cheetah is the small spotted frog Amelia brings home in a macaroni container. Amelia longs to keep Cheetah forever, but over the course of a week, she comes to understand that his place is back in the wild. Cheetah is based on a true story, and all the characters are real.

Wendy A. Lewis was born in Ottawa but has spent most of her life near Leaskdale, Ontario, where one of her favourite authors, L. M. Montgomery, wrote many of her books. Wendy always knew she wanted to be a writer, and for years she wrote bits and pieces of stories. She also studied English Literature at the University of Toronto, worked as a tutor, a retail store owner, and in sales, marketing and public relations positions. Finally she realized that to get a story published, you have to finish writing it! So that's what she did.
She is the author of several stories and books used as classroom readers, as well as the picture book In Abby's Hands, and Graveyard Girl, a collection of stories for teens, which received the Canadian Authors' Association Vicky Metcalf Award for excellence in young adult short fiction. To get at the heart of her stories, Wendy has prowled through cemeteries, jumped out of airplanes and counted the eggs of a giant leatherback turtle in Costa Rica.
Sometimes Wendy gets ideas for stories from real events. One day, her daughter came home with a leopard frog she had named Cheetah. During the week that Cheetah lived with the family, Wendy could see how sad Amelia got when grown-ups kept asking "when are you taking the frog back to the pond?" That's how the chapter book, Cheetah, came to be written.
Wendy loves to visit schools and libraries to talk about the writing process and conduct creative writing workshops. She lives in Uxbridge, Ontario with her husband, two daughters, two teddy bear hamsters, a Rag Doll cat, a Betta fish, and occasionally, a visiting frog.

Wendy A. Lewis' profile page

Look! Look what I've done!! The words of an eight year old as he holds up the drawing of a vibrant red fire engine. Oh Graham, that's wonderful.

Really? Oh this is good. You draw a picture and you get a reaction. I could get into this! And so it began. The seed was planted, further watered by bedtime rituals of propping pillows up against his bedroom wall getting into bed to get lost in a family member's reading of The Wind in the Willows.

An unintended lesson learned through those readings that our intrepid illustrator still calls upon in his illustration work is that the viewer will take different things from the illustration and he will add elements to the illustration that may go over some heads, but others will catch them and smile. There's always something to look at.

A graduate of the illustration program at Sheridan College in Ontario, Graham thought he would stick around the big smoke and in addition to his work as a designer at Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart, he would also cultivate his Flock of Seagulls hair style and work on his dance floor moves. But alas soon follicles started to recede and shoulder pads deflated, so Graham moved back to his hometown of Ottawa, Ontario to contemplate his next career move.

It was in Ottawa that Graham began his freelance illustration and graphic design career. A career that has spawned illustrations for such publishers as Orca Book Publishers, Scholastic Canada, and Meadowside Books of the United Kingdom, as well as numerous Canadian government agencies and private design firms.

He lives in Merrickville, Ontario with a circus star family: his juggling wife, a helldriver daughter, a canine cannonball, and a fire breathing cat.

Graham Ross' profile page

• Commended, CCBC Best Books for Kids & Teens, starred selection
• Commended, Resource Links, The Year's Best Books

"A quirky and entertaining choice for children with an interest in animals, and excellent for all collections."

Resource Links

"Introduces children to the familiar moral dilemma of taking a wild animal out of nature to keep it as a pet. Recommended."

CM Magazine

Cheetah (Orca Echoes)