Mary Pope Osborne grew up in a military family, and by the time she was 15 she had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she majored in religion. After graduation, she traveled around Europe and Asia. Before becoming an author, she worked as a window dresser, a medical assistant, a Russian travel consultant, a waitress, an acting teacher, a bartender, and an assistant editor for a children's magazine. She is the author of the popular Magic Tree House series. Her husband, actor Will Osborne, helps her write the nonfiction companion series, Magic Tree House Research… Guides. Many of her books have been named to best-books lists. In February 1993, she was elected the 27th president of the Author's Guild.
Peter Catalanotto was born in March 1959 in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up in East Northport, Long Island. Catalanotto was educated at the Pratt Institute; his career as an illustrator began in the 1980s, painting jackets for young adult books and illustrating for newspapers and magazines. In 1987 he was asked to illustrate All I See by Cynthia Rylant. Peter then went on to write several picture books, the first being Dylan's Day Out, published in 1989. He has since published over 40 books, 14 of which he also wrote, including Matthew A. B. C., Emily's Art, Ivan the Terrier, and Question Boy Meets Little Miss Know-it-All.