Ellen Raskin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up during the Great Depression. Although The Tattooed Potato and other clues can hardly be described as an autobiographical novel, Ellen Raskin was an artist, and she did live and work in a redbrick house with blue-green shutters on a shy Greenwich Village street in New York City. Like Garson, her skylighted studio was upstairs, but there were no "ugly tenants" in Number 12--just three cats and a ghost who didn't pay rent. She was the author of several other novels, including the Newbery Medal-winning The Westing Game, the Newbery Honor-winning Figgs & Phantoms , The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), and The Tattooed Potato and other clues. She also wrote and illustrated many picture books and was an accomplished graphic artist. She designed dust jackets for dozens of books, including the first edition of Madeline L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time . Ms. Raskin died at the age of fifty-six on August 8, 1984, in New York City.