Margarita Engle is the national Young People’s Poet Laureate, and the first Latino to receive that honor. She is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner, and The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN Literary Award for Young Adult Literature winner.

Her verse memoir, Enchanted Air, received the Pura Belpré Award, a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor, and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, among others.

Her picture book Drum Dream Girl received the Charlotte Zolotow Award. Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives. She continues to visit Cuba as often as she can.

Sara Palacios is the illustrator of How to Code a Sandcastle, The Flying Girl, Agnes and Clarabelle, and many more books. She is also the recipient of the Pura Belpr Illustrator Honor for her work on Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match/Marisol McDonald no combina. A native of Mexico, she earned her BFA and MFA degrees in illustration from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.