Sandra Boynton, American humorist, songwriter, director, music producer, children’s book author and illustrator, was born on April 3, 1953, in Orange,

Sandra was born the third of four daughters in her family, and grew up in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. Her dad was a progressive educator and scholar who worked on textbooks, and was co-founder of Boynton/Cook publishers.

Her parents became Quakers when she was two years old, and from kindergarten through twelfth-grade, she and her sisters attended Germantown Friends School. She majored in English at Yale University and studied drama at the University of California, Berkley.

Several of her books are board books for very young children. Her first book was published in 1977, titled “Hippos Go Berserk.” She has written and illustrated over 75 children’s books and seven general audience books, including five New York Times Bestsellers. More than 85 million of her books have been sold.

Sandra’s greeting cards sold between 1973 and 2003, with a 1975 birthday card featuring four animals and message “Hippo Birdie Two Eves,” a pun for “Happy Birthday To You,” selling over ten million copies to date.

Sandra married wrier and olympic bronze medalist Jamie McEwan in 1978, and they have four children, Caitlin, Keith, Devin and Darcy. Sandra writes in a reconstructed 120-year-old barn on her property in rural New England, which has perhaps the only hippopotamus weather vane in America.