Allison Barrows

At age 2, Allison Barrows drew her first comic characters: hundreds of happy faces inside the closets of her parents' home. By 3, she graduated to drawing perfectly proportioned people -- with bird beaks. By 6, she created her first comic strip, Clifford, about a boy and his urbane talking dog who did homework instead of eating it (she still kind of likes that idea).

Allison went on to major in advertising at the Paier College of Art in Hamden, Conn. There she met her future husband, illustrator Romas Kukalis. After graduation, they moved to Manhattan to pursue their careers, which for Allison, was a dreary exercise in retail and catalog advertising.

The couple eventually returned to Connecticut, where Allison worked as advertising copy chief for a department store chain before moving to The Hartford Courant as an artist and designer. During this time, she won the first of several awards for her work. She also created her first published comic strip, Friends Fatales, which appeared in several weeklies and in special sections of the Courant.

Allison has written and illustrated two children's books, "The Artist's Model" and "The Artist's Friends" (Carolrhoda, Inc.). Thrilled as she was, she returned to her true passion -- comic strips.

PreTeena was born when Allison rediscovered, in a pile of papers, a children's book idea she'd developed. She thought it would make a good comic strip, and Universal Press Syndicate agreed, launching PreTeena in 2001.

Allison's greatest comic strip influences have been Peanuts, B.C., Andy Capp, Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes and the brilliant panel cartoonists in The New Yorker and Playboy.

The cartoonist lives with her husband and two children, Alexandra and Guyon, in Keene, N.H.