Jacqueline Woodson (JacquelineWoodson.com) received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2022 Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and an NAACP Image Award. Her dozens of books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and the picture book Each Kindness, which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Tonya Engel (TonyaEngelArt.com) also illustrated Yaya and the Sea (by Karen Good Marable), Because Claudette (by Tracey Baptiste), My Hair Is Magic (by M. L. Marroquin), Rise! (by Bethany Hegedus), and Beacon of Hope: The Life of Barack Obama (by Doreen Rappaport). She has had studios in New York, Paris, Houston, Spain, and Austin, where she lives now.