Eleanor Coerr was born in 1922 in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, Canada. Before becoming a children's book author, she was a newspaper reporter, an editor of a column for children, and taught children's literature at Monterey Peninsula College and creative writing at Chapman College in California. Her works include Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Mieko and the Fifth Treasure, Sadako, and The Big Balloon Race. She died on November 22, 2010 at the age of 88.