ef Kaminsky is the Director of Programming and Development for Scholastic Entertainment, but that's not all he does. In addition, he has illustrated several picture books. Jef is also a writer, and the first book he wrote and illustrated, Poppy & Ella, was published in Spring 2000. His original artwork for Poppy and Ella was exhibited at The Lighthouse Center for the Arts in Palm Beach.

In Spring 2002, Jef's collaboration with Sarah Weeks, Bite Me: I'm a Book and Bite Me: I'm a Shape, was published by Random House. With Martha Atwater, he has created a unique series of animal sticker books, Stickamajigs, which were also published in Spring 2002 by Hyperion. If that's not enough, Jef has a regular gig doing illustration for The Wall Street Journal.

Jef grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. It was at Sarah Lawrence that Jef first realized that children's books were his passion. After college, Jef moved south, to New York City, where he taught third grade at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, but he found third-graders to be just a little too grown-up. So he began teaching kindergarten, where he was surrounded by like-minded people.

After teaching for three years, Jef worked as an animator and scenic designer before landing a job on Scholastic's award-winning The Magic School Bus TV project, which led to his current position there as a producer of the Clifford The Big Red Dog TV shows.