Meet the author

Andy Runton.

Writer & illustrator · United States · b. 1971

Andy Runton: American cartoonist behind the (almost) wordless Owly graphic-novel series — gentle, character-led, picture-balloon comics for the very earliest graphic-novel readers, ages 4–7.

Andy Runton is an American cartoonist born in 1971, best known as the creator of the wordless Owly graphic-novel series, gentle, character-led comics about a kind-hearted owl and his small forest friends (a worm named Wormy, a hummingbird, a flying squirrel). Owly began as self-published mini-comics in 2002 and has since been collected by Scholastic Graphix for the contemporary early-reader graphic-novel market. Runton's style is clean, expressive, and almost entirely visual, characters communicate via picture-balloons rather than text, making Owly an unusually accessible bridge from picture book to comics for the youngest readers. A core early-graphic-novel author for ages 4–7.