Margaret Wise Brown, cherished for her unique ability to convey a child’s experience and perspective of the world, transformed the landscape of children’s literature with such beloved classics as Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny.

Other perennial favorites by Ms. Brown include My World; Christmas in the Barn; The Dead Bird; North, South, East, West; and Good Day, Good Night.

Leonard S. Marcus is one of the world’s leading writers about children’s books and their illustration.

His many books include Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing; Funny Business; Conversations with Writers of Comedy; and Show Me a Story! Why Picture Books Matter.

His essays, interviews and reviews appear in The New York Times Book Review and the Horn Book magazine. He teaches at New York University and the School of Visual Arts and lectures around the world. Leonard lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Clement Hurd (1908–1988) is best known for illustrating Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, the classic picture books by Margaret Wise Brown. He studied painting in Paris with Fernand Léger and others in the early 1930s. After his return to the United States in 1935, he began to work in children's books.

He illustrated more than one hundred books, many of them with his wife, Edith Thacher Hurd, including the Johnny Lion books, The Day the Sun Danced, and The Merry Chase. A native of New York City, he lived most of his life in Vermont and California.