Alison Hart has been writing since she was seven years old when she wrote, illustrated and self-published The Wild Dog. (A book she still shows young readers to prove that it's never too early to be an author.) Today she is an adjunct college instructor teaching reading and writing as well as the author of over twenty mysteries and historical suspense novels for children and teens, including Gabriel's Horses, which has been nominated for over eight state awards. "I honed my craft writing Nancy Drew mysteries and quickly developed a love of strong characters who are thrown into suspenseful situations; in other words, I love writing books that keep young readers glued to the pages."

Patricia Hermes is the author of almost fifty books for readers from early middle grades through young adult, as well as two nonfiction books for adults. Her books have won many awards and recognitions: American Library Association Best Book, Smithsonian Notable Book, C.S. Lewis Honor Book, Ira Children's Choice, as well as many state awards, four of them for the novel,You Shouldn't Have to Say Goodbye.

As a lecturer and speaker at schools and libraries, she engages her audience with her lively presentations, underscoring key qualities of good writing, and, of course, good rewriting. (She has been known to revise her books ten times!) She has researched and written six historical novels in the Scholastic Dear America/My America series.

Whitney Sanderson is the author of HORSE DIARIES #5: GOLDEN SUN and HORSE DIARIES #10: DARCY. She lives in Massachusetts and has an Appaloosa horse named Thor. She has spent time volunteering at Little Brook Farm, a horse rescue and therapeutic riding center in Old Chatham, NY. Her latest book, HORSE RESCUE: TREASURE, is based on the story of a horse who was rescued by Little Brook Farm and went on to become one of their most beloved lesson horses.

Kate Klimo spent her early years amidst the cornfields of Iowa where the winters were prodigious. Often, when the snows flash-thawed in the spring, she would find her backyard filled with the flapping, resurrected bodies of fish her ice-fishing father had stored in the snowdrifts. Thus sprang into her young head the unshakable notion that, all winter long, fish escaped from the rivers and magically swum through the snow banks of Mount Vernon, Iowa.

When she moved to the little town of Sea Cliff, on Long Island Sound, she met her best friend Justine in the Stenson Memorial Library at the main desk, where they often checked out the same fantasy writers. Together, they read C.S. Lewis, E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, and George MacDonald and embarked on a tireless search for portals to magical worlds, extending from abandoned Victorian mansions to the decrepit local five-and-dime to the sandy cliffs sweeping down to the Sound.

With her propensity for magical thinking and long-standing love of fantasy, does it come as any surprise that Kate grew up to be in the book business? But after over 25 years of heading up Random House Children’s Books, with the publication of The Dragon in the Sock Drawer in March 2008, Kate began to ease over to the author’s side of the desk.

Now a full-time author, in addition to numerous one-off titles, she has written the middle-grade series The Dragon Keepers series and the Dog Diaries as well the Centauriad for young adults. Under the pen name Bonnie Worth, she has penned over a dozen books in the best-selling Cat in the Hat Learning Library. She lives in New Paltz, New York with her husband and two horses.