Author Pam Mu�oz Ryan was born in Bakersfield, California on December 25, 1951. She received a B. A. in child development and a M. A. in education from San Diego State University. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a bilingual Head Start teacher and as an early childhood program administrator. At first, she wrote adult books about child development, but soon switched to writing children's books. She has written over twenty-five picture books, novels, and nonfiction books for young readers. The novel Esperanza Rising, winner of the Pura Belpre Medal, the Jane Addams Peace Award, an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, and the Americas Award Honor Book, is based on her own… grandmother's immigration from Mexico to California. Riding Freedom has also won many awards including the national Willa Cather Award and the California Young Reader Medal. When Marian Sang, a picture book about singer Marian Anderson, won numerous awards including the ALA Sibert Honor and NCTE's Orbis Pictus Award. She currently lives in Leucadia, California.
Craig Brown was born in 1957 and has been a journalist for almost 30 years. He has been the only recipient of the What the Papers Say General Pleasure award in the past 40 years. He presently writes the Way of the World column in the Daily Telegraph, the main book review in the Mail on Sunday and the parodic diary in Private Eye. His previous books include This is Craig Brown, The Marsh Marlowe Letters, The Little Book of Chaos and 1966 and All That. He divides his time between Swindon and Ipswich. His fans are wide-ranging from Stephen Fry ('The wittiest writer in Britain today') to Elton John ('We love Craig Brown') and from John Mortimer ('Britain's greatest parodist') to Rory Bremner… ('Among the finest literary parody we have'). He was recently described by Elaine Showalter in the Guardian as 'the greatest satirist since Max Beerbohm'.