Jean Craighead George was born on July 2, 1919 in Washington, D.C. She received degrees in English and science from Pennsylvania State University. She began her career as a reporter for the International News Service. In the 1940s she was a member of the White House press corps for The Washington Post. During her lifetime, she wrote over 100 novels including My Side of the Mountain, which was a 1960 Newbery Honor Book, On the Far Side of the Mountain, Julie of the Wolves, which won the Newbery Medal, Julie, and Julie's Wolf Pack. She also wrote two guides to cooking with wild foods and an autobiography entitled Journey Inward. In 1991, she became the first winner of the School Library Media… Section of the New York Library Association's Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile Literature. She died on May 15, 2012 at the age of 92.
Lucia Washburn has illustrated more than a dozen books for children. Her Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science books include Dinosaur Tracks , Dinosaurs Big and Small , and Did Dinosaurs Have Feathers? , which has illustrations that "provide vivid visualizations of long-ago landscapes" ( School Library Journal ). Her other books include Look to the North by Jean Craighead George, a 1997 Parents' Choice Gold Award winner praised as "a fine addition to science collections" (ALA Booklist ). When she travels, she and her family enjoy visiting the local museums to see their dinosaur collections. Being the mother of two children, she has a special fondness for Maiasaura . She lives in California with… her family.