Laurel Snyder is the author of six children's novels, "Orphan Island," "Seven Stories Up," "Bigger than a Bread Box," "Penny Dreadful," "Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess" and "Any Which Wall" (Random House) as well as many picture books, including "Charlie & Mouse," "The Forever Garden," "Swan, the life and dance of Anna Pavlova," and "Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher." A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Michener Fellow, she also writes books for grownups, and is the author of a book of poems, "The Myth of the Simple Machines" (No Tell Books) and a chapbook, "Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse (Burnside Review Press) and the editor of an anthology, "Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes" (Soft Skull Press). Though Baltimore will always be her home, she now lives happily in Atlanta.