Children's author Edith Thacher Hurd was born in Kansas City, Missouri on September 13, 1910. She married children's illustrator Clement Hurd in 1939 and they become one of children's literature's best-known teams. She wrote over seventy-five children's books, including Starfish, I Dance in My Red Pajamas and the Johnny Lion books, many of which were illustrated by her husband. In 1986, she wrote a memoir about the collaboration between Gertrude Stein and her husband entitled The World is Not Flat.
Margaret Wise Brown was born on May 10, 1910 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York, to Robert Brown, a Vice President at American Manufacturing Company and Maud Brown, a housewife. She attended school in Lausanne, Switzerland for three years, before attending Dana Hall in Wellesley, Massachusetts for two years. In 1928, she began taking classes at Hollis College in Virginia. In 1935, Brown began working at the Bank Street Cooperative School for student teachers. Two years later, her writing career took off with the publication of "When the Wind Blows." Over the course of fourteen years, Brown wrote over one hundred picture books for children. Some of her best known titles include Goodnight… Moon, Big Red Barn and Runaway Bunny. Margaret Wise Brown died on November 13, 1952 of an embolism following an operation in Nice, France.Children's book illustrator Clement Hurd was born on January 12, 1908. He studied architecture at Yale Univesity and painting in Paris with Fernand Leger. He illustrated Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, many of his wife Edith Hurd's books, and The World Is Round, which is the only children's book written by Gertrude Stein. He died on February 5, 1988.