Nathan Lee Powell is an American cartoonist and musician. Born in 1978 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Nate spent his childhood in different parts of the country, as his family moved around following his father's duties as an Air Force officer. Powell became active in the punk rock scene since his teen age. He ended up performing in several bands over the years, and even owing a DIY punk record label. At the same time, he developed an interest in visual arts and majored in Cartooning at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. For about ten years Powell worked as a care giver for adult with developmental disabilities, while also drawing comic books. His major break came with the graphic novel Swallow Me Whole, which won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Debut and Outstanding Artist in 2008, as well as the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2009. Between 2013 and 2016 Nate Powell released what remains his most famous work, the three volumes of March, a comic biography of civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis.

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series. R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold. Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY. http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Jeanne DuPrau spends several hours of every day at her computer, thinking up sentences. She has this quote taped to her wall: "A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people" (Thomas Mann). This gives her courage, because she finds writing very hard. So many words to choose from! So many different things that could happen in a story at any moment! Writing is one tough decision after another. But it's also the most satisfying thing she knows how to do. So she keeps doing it. So far, she has written four novels, six books of nonfiction, and quite a few essays and stories. Jeanne DuPrau doesn't write every minute of every day. She also putters around in her garden. She lives in California, where it's easy to grow everything from apples to zinnias. Jeanne DuPrau doesn't have children, but she has two nephews, a niece, and a dog. The dog lives with her. His name is Ethan. Jeanne and Ethan get along well, though their interests are different. Ethan is not very fond of reading, for example, and Jeanne doesn't much like chasing squirrels. But they agree on walks, naps, and trips in the car to surprise destinations. Ethan also likes to help in the garden.

Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Jordan, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her B.A. in English and world religions from Trinity University. She is a novelist, poet and songwriter. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010.

Cynthia Voigt is an American author of books for young adults dealing with various topics such as adventure, mystery, racism and child abuse. Awards: Angus and Sadie: the Sequoyah Book Award (given by readers in Oklahoma), 2008 The Katahdin Award, for lifetime achievement, 2003 The Anne V. Zarrow Award, for lifetime achievement, 2003 The Margaret Edwards Award, for a body of work, 1995 Jackaroo: Rattenfanger-Literatur Preis (ratcatcher prize, awarded by the town of Hamlin in Germany), 1990 Izzy, Willy-Nilly: the Young Reader Award (California), 1990 The Runner: Deutscher Jungenliteraturpreis (German young people's literature prize), 1988 Zilverengriffel (Silver Pen, a Dutch prize), 1988 Come a Stranger: the Judy Lopez Medal (given by readers in California), 1987 A Solitary Blue: a Newbery Honor Book, 1984 The Callender Papers: The Edgar (given by the Mystery Writers of America), 1984 Dicey's Song: the Newbery Medal, 1983

Karen Hesse is an American author of children's literature and literature for young adults, often with historical settings. Her novel Out of the Dust was the winner of the 1998 Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. In 2002, Hesse was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. For more information, please see http://us.macmillan.com/author/karenh...

Ann Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. She's now a full-time writer. Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes. Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself. Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s. After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children. http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel, Paper Towns, is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios. In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found on the Nerdfighters website, or a direct link here.

Librarian note: AKA Jenny Carroll (1-800-Where-R-You series), AKA Patricia Cabot (historical romance novels). Meg Cabot was born on February 1, 1967, during the Chinese astrological year of the Fire Horse, a notoriously unlucky sign. Fortunately she grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, where few people were aware of the stigma of being a fire horse—at least until Meg became a teenager, when she flunked freshman Algebra twice, then decided to cut her own bangs. After six years as an undergrad at Indiana University, Meg moved to New York City (in the middle of a sanitation worker strike) to pursue a career as an illustrator, at which she failed miserably, forcing her to turn to her favorite hobby—writing novels—for emotional succor. She worked various jobs to pay the rent, including a decade-long stint as the assistant manager of a 700 bed freshmen dormitory at NYU, a position she still occasionally misses. She is now the author of nearly fifty books for both adults and teens, selling fifteen million copies worldwide, many of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers, most notably The Princess Diaries series, which is currently being published in over 38 countries, and was made into two hit movies by Disney. In addition, Meg wrote the Mediator and 1-800-Where-R-You? series (on which the television series, Missing, was based), two All-American Girl books, Teen Idol, Avalon High, How to Be Popular, Pants on Fire, Jinx, a series of novels written entirely in email format (Boy Next Door, Boy Meets Girl, and Every Boy's Got One), a mystery series (Size 12 Is Not Fat/ Size 14 Is Not Fat Either/Big Boned), and a chick-lit series called Queen of Babble. Meg is now writing a new children's series called Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls. Her new paranormal series, Abandon, debuts in Summer of 2011. Meg currently divides her time between Key West, Indiana, and New York City with a primary cat (one-eyed Henrietta), various back-up cats, and her husband, who doesn't know he married a fire horse. Please don't tell him. Series: * Airhead * The Princess Diaries * Mediator