Sorche Nic Leodhas (1898-1969) was born LeClaire Louise Gowans in Youngstown, Ohio. After the death of her first husband, she moved to New York and attended classes at Columbia University. Several years later, she met her second husband and became LeClaire Gowans Alger. She was a longtime librarian at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she also wrote children's books. Shortly before she retired in 1966, she began publishing Scottish folktales and other stories under the pseudonym Sorche Nic Leodhas, Gaelic for Claire, daughter of Louis. In 1963, she received a Newbery Honor for Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland. Alger continued to write… and publish books until her death 1969.
Illustrator and author Nonny Hogrogian was born in New York City on May 7, 1932. She received a Bachelors degree in fine arts from Hunter College in 1953 and studied woodcutting at the New School of Social Research in 1957. Since illustrating her first book in 1960, she has split her time between freelance illustration and working as a designer for the children's books at Holt, Rinehart and Winston and then Charles Scribner's Sons. She received a Caldecott medal for Always Room for One More in 1966 and One Fine Day in 1972. Her book, The Contest, was named a Caldecott Honor Book. She married poet David Kherdian in 1971 and she occasionally illustrates some of his works.