Taro Yahima (the pseudonym for Jun Atsushi Iwamatsu) was born in September 21, 1908 in Kagoshima, Japan, and immigrated to the United States in 1939. He studied art in Tokyo at the Imperial Art Academy from 1927 to 1930 and later at the Art Students League in New York City, from 1939 to 1941. He first used the pseudonym Yashima during his service with the Office of Strategic Services in World War II. Yashima began writing and illustrating books in the 1940s. His first work, autobiographical in content, The New Sun, was published in 1943. Yashima's first book specifically for children, The Village Tree, came out in 1953. Like several of his later works, it would focus on his and his collaborator's (and wife), Mitsu Yashima, experiences growing up in Japan. Yashima also wrote several books based on his daughter, Momo, including Umbrella (1958) and Momo's Kitten (1961). Yashima's works have been widely praised by critics for their simplicity and vivid colors that convey movement and feeling, and for his sensitivity to children's concerns, a first umbrella and kitten, the torments of being different and teased for it. Three of Yashima's works have been Caldecott Medal runners-up, Umbrella , Crow Boy , and Seashore Story .