Libby Hathorn (Author) Libby Hathorn is an award-winning author and poet of more than seventy books for children, young adults, and adult readers. Translated into several languages and adapted for both stage and screen, her work has won honours in Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Holland. In 2014 she won The Alice Award, a national award given to 'a woman who has made a distinguished and long term contribution to Australian literature'. In 2017 she won the Asher Award, a peace prize, for A Soldier, a Dog and a Boy . Her first young adult novel Thunderwith has enjoyed thirty years in continuous print and was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. Two of Libby's picture books, Grandma's Shoes and Sky Sash So Blue , have been performed as operas, with a third, Outside , with music composed by Elena Kats-Chernin, already on its way. Libby is a keen educator who has lectured part-time at Sydney University and is devoted to being an ambassador for poetry anywhere and everywhere. In 2012 she was a National Ambassador for Reading and travelled to many country towns to talk about Australian literature.

Libby acts as a judge for various literary prizes, including the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. For more information, free writing tips and teaching resources, go to www.libbyhathorn.com Mel Pearce (Illustrator) Mel Pearce is an artist and illustrator who likes scribbling in detail. She takes inspiration from games, Japanese animation, machinery, childhood nostalgia, elephants, fish and teeth, to name a few things.Her work has appeared in literary magazines dotdotdash and Voiceworks and was featured on the West Australian Young Readers Book Award poster for 2017.Mel was born in Subiaco, grew up in Darwin and lives in Perth's northern suburbs.