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.

Mike Curato is the author and illustrator of the beloved polka-dotted elephant, Little Elliot, who appears in his books Little Elliot, Big City; Little Elliot, Big Family; Little Elliot, Big Fun; and Little Elliot, Fall Friends.

He is also the illustrator of Worm Loves Wormby J.J. Austrian and All the Way to Havana by Margarita Engle. Mike lives in Northampton, Massachusetts,