Lynne Rickards was born in Canada and now lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She grew up writing and illustrating her own stories and actually went to art school at 18 to study illustration.

However, she decided she was much happier writing the stories and loves to see artwork in her books, knowing it's so much better than anything she could ever have done.

Tanya Landman has written numerous books for children and young people, including Buffalo Soldier, winner of the Carnegie Medal, Apache, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Prize, The Goldsmith's Daughter and Hell and High Water

Shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Sam Swann and Poppy Fields mystery series and the beautiful picture book Mary's Penny.

Tanya lives in Bideford, Devon, with her husband and their two sons.

Peter Millett was born in New Zealand. He was first published aged nine when one of his humorous poems appeared in the national press.

He has since gone on to publish a great many children's books in New Zealand, including picture books and educational books. He has a passion for zany English humour and Spike Milligan is one of his all time heroes. He lives with his family in Auckland.

Vivian French is a highly acclaimed children's author who has written more than 250 books during the course of her career, including Caterpillar, Butterfly, The Tales from the Five Kingdoms series and Yucky Worms.

Her recent work includes the critically acclaimed picture book The Most Wonderful Thing in the World and junior fiction The Adventures of Alfie Onion, The Cherry Pie Princess and The Witches' Midnight Feast.

Vivian teaches on the illustration course at Edinburgh School of Art, and helped to found the mentoring scheme Picture Hooks for aspiring young illustrators. She lives in Edinburgh