Margy Burns Knight has received the National Education Association's Author-Illustrator Human & Civil Rights Award for the body of her work with Anne Sibley O'Brien (Talking Walls and other books) and the 2001 Children's Africana Book Award for Africa Is Not a Country (also illustrated by Anne Sibley O'Brien). In addition to her work as an author, presenting in hundreds of classrooms around the world, Margy is also a teacher and community volunteer. She is the Service Learning Coordinator for the Winthrop, Maine, public school system and has taught English as a Second Language to high school students from Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Jordan.