Eric Kimmel was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1946. He received a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Lafayette College. He also has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Illinois. He was an elementary school teacher and college professor before becoming a full-time writer. He has published over fifty titles, many of which have won state and national awards. His titles "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins" won the Caldecott Honor Medal, "The Chanukkah Guest" and "Gershon's Monster" won the Sydney Taylor Picture Book Award and "Anansi and the Talking Melon" won the Utah Children's Choice Award. Kimmel travels nationally and internationally visiting schools and talking about his books and telling stories. Leonard Everett Fisher is a well-known and prolific author and illustrator of children's books. He has also written for adults and created illustrations for magazines. In addition, Fisher was dean of the Whitney School of Art and a visiting professor at a number of schools. Fisher was born in 1927 in the Bronx, New York, and started to draw as a small child. After graduating from high school, he studied at Brooklyn College and then entered the army where he worked with a mapmaker. He holds a B.F.A. and a M.F.A. from Yale University. The first book that Fisher illustrated was The Exploits of Xenophon, written by Geoffrey Household and published in 1955. Fisher then illustrated and wrote numerous books himself. He is well known for the Colonial Americans series, for the Nineteenth-Century America series for young adults, and for many other nonfiction works. He has written two works for adults-Masterpieces of American Painting (1985) and Remington and Russell (1986).