Barbara Mitchelhill was born in Rochdale and trained as a teacher. While she was teaching, she began writing for BBC children's TV and went on to write for educational publishers, before writing novels for children.

She makes school visits all over the country, and enjoys appearing at literary festivals and talking to teachers and librarians, some as far away as the Caribbean. Her hobbies include reading, theatre, music, gardening and walking her border terrier, Ella.

She lives in Staffordshire and has two grown-up daughters and four grandchildren.

Kate Simpson grew up on a diet of Little Women, Anne of Green Gables and anything written by Enid Blyton, but it didn't occur to her to try her own hand at writing children's books until she was in her thirties. Now she's hooked, and with two small children of her own, she finds she's never short of inspiration.

As well as being a picture book author and incurable bookworm, Kate is also a co-host of the children's book podcast One More Page, where she happily spends an hour a fortnight interviewing fellow book-folk and talking all things children's books.