Born in Whyalla and moving to Adelaide in her teens, Tania Ingram became a child psychologist before taking a break to spend more time with her family, which was when she began writing stories for children.

The Jinny and Cooper series evolved from Tania's daughter begging her to write a story about a magical guinea pig. Then three months after finishing the first Jinny and Cooper book, Tania was given two baby guinea pigs.

One of them had scruffy black and brown fur and never ate carrots. Furthermore, he proved to be very mischievous (Tania once had to pull a hama bead off his bottom teeth!). Of course, he was immediately named Cooper. Tania lives in the Adelaide hills with her family.

Lucinda Gifford was brought up in Scotland and originally intended to become an architect, studying Architecture at Edinburgh and Bath Universities.

Lucinda’s love of drawing buildings was cancelled out at the time by an overwhelming disinterest in construction sites and the newly-introduced CAD technology, and so she went on to spend a very enjoyable fifteen years in Auckland, London and Melbourne working in advertising and design.

These days, Lucinda lives with her family in Melbourne’s northern suburbs – and works as an illustrator, author-illustrator and graphic designer from her cosy, messy home studio.

Lucinda uses pencil, ink, crayon, marker, and watercolour to produce her illustrations, and usually uses PhotoShop to put everything together. When not sketching, designing or developing story ideas, Lucinda enjoys plot twists, beach walks and staring out the windows of Melbourne trams.