TONY JOHNSTON’s numerous books for children include It’s About Dogs, illustrated by Ted Rand, Very Scary, illustrated by Douglas Florian, and The Day of the Dead, illustrated by Jeanette Winter. She lives with her family in California.

"Johnston creates an unrepentantly exaggerated version of events that is sure to entertain, offering more factual information about Strauss in an author's note. Using a bright idea of his own, Innerst (Lincoln Tells a Joke) chronicles the raucous action in acrylic paintings on a canvas of, yes, old Levi's jeans. The denim's texture provides an appropriately rugged tone to the colorful proceedings."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Johnston antes up the readaloudability with traditional tall-tale banter and a bold-faced "Dang!" every time Strauss gets a brainstorm. Innerst extends the fun by painting the sartorially challenged miners on, what else, blue jeans, craftily leaving the blue untouched for jeans, tents, chalkboards, ocean, and bay, and letting flat-felled seams do double duty as the floor of a covered wagon or the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge."-Bulletin