Eat Up: An Infographic Exploration of Food

If you believe Paula AyerÕs parents, she was reading books by herself before she was three years old. She suspects they may be exaggerating, but she does remember spending much of her early years sitting on her favorite purple cushion next to the bookshelf, absorbed in stories of all sorts. By the time Paula was in fourth grade, she had read all the books in her elementary school library, so every week the librarian would walk her to the junior high school down the street, through crowds of intimidating teenagers, to borrow books from their library. Paula began her writing career several years later on her school newspaper, where her controversial horoscope column was the talk of the hallways. Other early writing accomplishments included a musical adaptation of Beowulf and a play about gerbils. After graduating, Paula defied expectations that she would pursue some kind of quiet, intellectual career by enrolling in the drama program at the University of Calgary. While she never fulfilled her dream of becoming a famous stage actor, her years in theater taught her the value of creative collaboration, along with helping her overcome her fear of making an idiot of herself in front of large groups of people. After receiving a Bachelor in Fine Arts, Paula moved to Vancouver and spent several years doing administrative work at a university. Sometimes her creative friends would ask her to write or edit things for their cool magazines and websites, and it eventually occurred to h

ANTONIA BANYARD is an editor and the co-author of the award-winning infographic titles, Eat Up! and Water Wow! She lives with her family in Nelson, British Columbia.