Frances O Roark Dowell is the editor and co-founder of Dream/Girl, an arts magazine for girls and has been Poet in Residence at Duke University. She has had dozens of poems published in literary journals, and is the author of two previous children's novels, Dovey Coe and Where I'd Like to Be. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two sons. Preston McDaniels is the illustrator of the Phineas L. MacGuire series and Cynthia Rylant's Lighthouse Family series. He lives in Aurora, Nebraska.