Scott O'Dell was born in Los Angeles in 1898, wrote twenty-six books for children before his death at the age of ninety-one. Among his many literary awards were the Newbery Medal (for Island of the Blue Dolphins ), the Newbery Honor (for The Black Pearl ), and the Hans Christian Anderson Award for his body of work, the highest international award given to an author of children's books. Marion Dane Bauer is an award-winning author who also teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College. She lives with her partner, Ann Goddard, in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Karen Cushman has had a lifelong interest in history and "wanted to know what ordinary life was like for ordinary young people in other times." Her research led to the writing of Catherine, Called Birdy, a Newbery Honor book, and The Midwife's Apprentice, a Newbery Medal winner. She lives on Vashon Island, Washington. Visit her website at www.

karencushmanbooks.com Gary Schmidt is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and a Newbery Honor for The Wednesday Wars . He lives with his family on a one-hundred-fifty-year-old farm in Alto, Michigan, where he splits wood, plants gardens, writes, and feeds the wild cats that drop by.