Chris Van Dusen
Recognized in the Creative Minds Montessori 2026 Teacher’s Choice list.
Chris Van Dusen is one of roughly one hundred authors whose work was selected by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori for the 2026 Teacher’s Choice list — 120 books chosen across four reading stages, from first lap-reads to first chapter books. The selected book was chosen for how precisely it meets children at a real developmental moment. This recognition cannot be bought: no author or publisher paid to appear on our lists, and we take no commission on any book sale.
About Chris Van Dusen
Chris Van Dusen paints gleaming, retro-futurist gouache worlds from his home in Maine — the If I Built... series is a perennial STEM-classroom favorite, and his Mercy Watson illustrations define that series' joy.
A longtime magazine illustrator, Van Dusen wrote his first book after a decade of drawing other people's ideas; the If I Built books channel the vehicle daydreams he sketched constantly as a boy.
Also by this author: If I Built a House · If I Built a School · The Circus Ship
Official website: www.chrisvandusen.com
Selected for the 2026 Teacher’s Choice list
Part of The Best Children’s Books by Age, chosen by the teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX.