Jean Fritz was born on November 16, 1915 in Hankow, China. The only child of missionary parents, she lived in a French compound, attended a British school,and spoke fluent Chinese. She received her A. B. degree in 1937 from Wheaton College and also studied at Columbia University. Fritz has worked as a research assistant, a children's librarian from 1937 to 1941, a teacher for the Board of Cooperative Educational Service, a lecturer, and faculty member at Appalachian State University, from 1980-1982. She also founded the Jean Fritz Writer's Workshops and taught writing from 1961 to 1969. Fritz published her first book, Bunny Hopewell's First Spring, in 1954. Fritz was awarded the Regina… Medal by the Catholic Library Association, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award by the American Library Association, and honored with the Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile Literature, presented by the New York State Library Association for her body of work. Other awards include Outstanding Pennsylvania Author, 1978; Honor Award for Nonfiction, Washington, D.C. Children's Book Guild, 1978-1979; Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Book Award, 1980, for Stonewall; American Book Award nomination, 1981, for Traitor: The Case of Benedict Arnold; Child Study Award and Christopher Award, both 1982; Newbery Honor Book Award, American Book Award and Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Book Award, all 1983, for Homesick: My Own Story; Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Award, 1984, for The Double Life of Pocahontas; and Regina Award, 1985.
DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan is an author and illustrator of more than forty picture books for children. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She likes to base the characters in her books on people she knows or people she has seen. Her works include Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen and City Green which were both Reading Rainbow selections and Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies. She also received a Congressional Commendation from the United States House of Representatives for her picture book Grandpa's Corner Store. She currently lives in a historical town right outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.