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Lesa Cline-Ransome is the award-winning author of many critically acclaimed books for young readers including Before She was Harriet, Overground Railroad, Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams and Fighting With Love: The Legacy of John Lewis. Her numerous honors include the Jane Addams Honor Award, the Christopher Award, Kirkus, and SLJ Best Book of Year and three NAACP Image Award nominations. Her middle grade novel Finding Langston received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. One Big Open Sky is her first novel in verse.
When not writing, Lesa loves eating chocolate and napping.
A mom to four wonderful humans, Lesa lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York with her husband and frequent collaborator, illustrator James Ransome.

Julie Gribble produces works for children and the children’s literature community in the United States and Great Britain. While a Children’s Literature Fellow at Stony Brook Southampton, she founded KidLit TV to help children’s authors and illustrators connect with their audience by using new technologies to complement and promote their work. Julie has been nominated for two Emmy Awards and is a multi-award-winning writer, screenwriter, filmmaker, and producer. Her charming picture book, Bubblegum Princess, is based on a true story about Kate Middleton and was released on the day the first royal baby, who we now know as Prince George, arrived. Copies of the book have been donated to underprivileged children in the US and to children’s hospices in the UK.
Julie sits on the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Children’s Committee and PEN’s Children’s and Young Adult Books Committee and is a member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. 

Roxie is the author/illustrator of more than 50 nonfiction, STEM/STEAM, and concept books for children, many using "gamification" to encourage reading, learning, and engagement (including Mazescapes; Amazement Park; the Inside-Outside Books: New York City [New York Times Best Illustrated Award], Washington DC, Texas, London, Paris, and Libraries; Feathers, Flaps &; Flops; Doors; Gargoyles, Girders & Glass Houses; Ranch; Wild West Trail Ride Maze; Circus; Mazeways: A to Z; Rodeo; Go!Go!Go!; Inside-Outside Dinosaurs; and the KIWi Storybooks nonfiction series). Her books have been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, Chinese and Japanese.

Recent books: A Day in the Life of the Desert; Lizards at Large; ABCity;Anteaters, Bats & Boas: The Amazon Rainforest from the Forest Floor to the Treetops;Dive In: Swim with Sea Creatures at their Actual Size; Rodent Rascals (THREE Starred Reviews!). Masterpiece Mix; Market Maze (Kirkus Star); Slithery Snakes; EcoMazes: 12 Earth Adventures (Starred review in School Library Journal; Smithsonian's Best Science Book for Children); Hatch! (Outstanding Science Trade Book, NSTA & CBC); Society of International Librarians Honor Award; Bank St College Best Books of 2012 w/Outstanding Merit); Busy Builders (Bank St CCLL Cook Prize Honor for STEM).

Interactive children's book apps: "Roxie's Puzzle Adventure" (16-screen multi-player jigsaw puzzle), "Roxie's a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure" (interactive game app), and the 3-D app, "Roxie's DOORS." Nine educational apps for KIWi (Kids Interactive Walk-in) Storybooks.

Roxie was born in Texas, and grew up in southern Maryland, by the Chesapeake Bay. At the age of six, she won first prize in a county-wide contest for a painting of a bowl of fruit. She has been a working artist all her life, for a while freelancing in Washington DC as a television courtroom artist. It was great training for life drawing, concentration under pressure, and making deadlines. Clients included CBS, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Fourteen of her paintings have been published as covers of The New Yorker magazine.

Roxie's work is in numerous private, public, and corporate collections, including the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota,; Roger Duvoisin Collection, Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers; and the De Grummand Collection, University of Southern Mississippi.

Roxie studied at the University of Maryland, the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore), earned a BFA in Painting from the University of Hawaii, attended graduate school at Ohio University (Athens), and received a Yaddo Fellowship in Painting. She lectures in museums, schools, libraries, conferences, and teaches in workshops.