Karla Kuskin was born in Manhattan on July 17, 1932. She received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Yale University in 1955. Her first book, Roar and More (1956), was the result of her senior graphic-arts project, for which she had to design and print a book on a small press. She was the author or illustrator of more than 50 children's books during her lifetime including In the Middle of the Trees (1958); The Rose on My Cake (1964); The Philharmonic Gets Dressed (1982); The Dallas Titans Get Ready for Bed (1986); Jerusalem, Shining Still (1987); City Dog (1994); The Upstairs Cat (1997); Moon, Have You Met My Mother? (2003); and Traces (2008). She died of cortical basal ganglionic… degeneration on August 20, 2009 at the age of 77.
Marc Simont was born in 1915 in Paris. His parents were from the Catalonia region of Spain, and his childhood was spent in France, Spain, and the United States. Encouraged by his father, Joseph Simont, an artist and staff illustrator for the magazine L'Illustration, Simont drew from a young age. He eventually attended art school in Paris, at the Acadmie Julian, Acadmie Ranson, and the Andr Lhote School, and in New York, at the New York National Academy of Design. He also spent three years in the army. When he was nineteen, Simont settled in America permanently, determined to support himself as an artist. His first illustrations for a children's book appeared in 1939. Since then, Simont has… illustrated nearly a hundred books. He won a Caldecott Honor in 1950 for illustrating Ruth Krauss's The Happy Day, and in in 1957 he was awarded the Caldecott Medal for his pictures in A Tree is Nice, by Janice May Udry. Simont's art is in collections as far afield at the Kijo Picture Book Museum in Japan. His most prized acknowledgement is having been chosen as the 1997 Illustrator of the Year in his native Catalonia by the Professional Association of Illustrators. Simont's book, The Stray Dog, won the Caldecott Medal in 2002.