Jon Scieszka was born September 8, 1954 in Flint , Michigan. After he graduated from Culver Military Academy where he was a Lieutenant, he studied to be a doctor at Albion College. He changed career directions and attended Columbia University where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1980. Before he became a full time writer, Scieszka was a lifeguard, painted factories, houses, and apartments and also wrote for magazines. He taught elementary school in New York for ten years as a 1st grade assistant, a 2nd grade homeroom teacher, and a computer, math, science and history teacher in 3rd - 8th grade. He decided to take off a year from teaching in order to work with Lane Smith, an… illustrator, to develop ideas for children's books. His book, The Stinky Cheese Man received the 1994 Rhode Island Children's Book Award. Scieszka's Math Curse, illustrated by Lane Smith, was an American Library Association Notable Book in 1996; a Blue Ribbon Book from the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books in 1995; and a Publisher's Weekly Best Children's Book in 1995. The Stinky Cheese Man received Georgia's 1997 Children's Choice Award and Wisconsin's The Golden Archer Award. Math Curse received Maine's Student Book Award, The Texas Bluebonnet Award and New Hampshire's The Great Stone Face Book Award in 1997. He was appointed the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress in 2008. In 2014 his title, Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor made The New York Times Best Seller List.
Gordon Korman was born in Montreal, Canada on October 23, 1963. When his 7th-grade English teacher told the class they could have 45 minutes a day for four months to work on a story of their choice, Korman began This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall. He was also the class monitor for the Scholastic TAB Book Club, so he sent his novel to the address on the TAB flyer, and a few days after his 14th birthday, he had a book contract with Scholastic. By the time he graduated from high school, he had published five other novels and several articles for Canadian newspapers. He received a BFA degree from New York University with a major in Dramatic Writing and a minor in Film and TV. He has… written over 75 books for children and young adults including the Swindle series, The Juvie Three, and two books of poetry written by the fictional character Jeremy Bloom.
Dan Gutman was born in New York City on October 19, 1955. He received a degree in psychology from Rutgers University in 1977. He started a video game magazine in 1982 called Video Games Player, which later became Computer Games. When the magazine went out of business in 1985, he decided to become a full-time writer. He wrote several non-fiction baseball books for adults, before changing his focus to non-fiction sports books for children. In 1994, he decided to switch to children's fiction. He is the author of the Baseball Card Adventures Series, My Weird School series, My Weird School Daze series, My Weirder School series, and The Genius Files series. In 2014 his title, Texas with Love,… which was the fourth book in the Genius Files Series, made The New York Times Best Seller List.