Maya Soetoro-Ng, a former high-school history teacher and university instructor, was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is the maternal half-sister of President Barack Obama. She says Ladder to the Moon, her first picture book, was inspired by her young daughter Suhaila's questions about her grandmother. Maya Soetoro-Ng lives in Hawaii with her husband and two daughters.

Award-winning illustrator Yuyi Morales was born and brought up in Mexico, and now lives with her family in northern California.