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Mike Artell - Children's Author, Cartoonist, Musician
Mike Artell: Children's Author and Cartoonist
Mike Artell is an award-winning author, illustrator, cartoonist, musician, and professional speaker. He graduated from Southeastern Louisiana University in 1972 with a B.A. in Marketing and spent the next 15 years in sales and marketing, primarily with technology-based companies. Mike's diverse career includes repossessing cars, selling color-coded filing systems to doctors (despite being color blind), offering restaurant supplies, and dealing in lumber and building materials. He has extensive experience marketing products and services for organizations involved in real-time data acquisition, artificial intelligence/expert systems, oil and gas exploration, electrical power generation, high-speed simulation, and business applications. Additionally, Mike has a solid background in customer service and training applications for numerous companies. He has served on the boards of two small technology firms and provided freelance marketing consulting services, including for Texas Instruments.
In 1987, Mike embarked on a new journey as a freelance writer, illustrator, and cartoonist. He hosted his own television show on WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, which attracted over 50,000 viewers weekly, making it number one in its time slot. Mike also created cartoons for various national publications, including The Washington Post and Entrepreneur Magazine. His first children's books were published in 1990, and since then, he has written and/or illustrated more than 35 books, several of which have received awards. Most notably, his book PETITE ROUGE – A CAJUN RED RIDING HOOD was named the 2009 Read Aloud Book of the Year by the National Association of Elementary School Principals.
Over the years, Mike has shared his techniques for thinking creatively, honing illustration skills, and writing more engagingly with hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. As a sought-after platform speaker, he addresses annual conferences for groups such as the American Society for Training and Development, American Society of Veterinary Medicine, and the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, among many others in business, education, healthcare, and various associations. Mike speaks on topics of creativity and innovation, effective communication, and using humor to reduce stress and foster community within organizations, highlighting the importance of perspective in our lives.
Mike lives in Covington, Louisiana, with his wife Susan, a middle school librarian. They have two grown daughters and five grandchildren. To explore more of Mike’s content, check out his channels on YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.
Fun fact
Mike has illustrated dozens of books even though he's color blind. Well...not exactly color "blind," but very color "weak." Just don't ask him to choose between the red object and the green object.