Brenda Scott Royce is a lifelong lover of beasts and books—and whenever possible her work combines the two. For more than a decade, she served as editor of Zoo View, the award-winning magazine of the Los Angeles Zoo. Her books include the comedic novel Monkey Love, about a New Yorker who becomes the temporary guardian of a mischievous monkey. She also wrote several episodes of the children’s television series Chuggington. Brenda likes to say that she majored in monkeys in college (she earned a bachelor’s degree in primatology and anthropology from California State University, Fullerton) and that some of her best friends are chimpanzees (she worked as a chimp keeper at a wildlife sanctuary). She lives in Covina, California.

Stephen Binns is an education writer at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. For ten years, he was writer and editor of Smithsonian in Your Classroom, a publication sent free of charge to all elementary and middle schools in the United States. His work has also appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and the National Catholic Reporter.

Emily Rose Oachs is a graduate of the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. She currently works as an editor at a Los Angeles-based educational company. In her spare time, she writes nonfiction books for elementary readers.

Kaitlyn DiPerna is an award-winning writer, developer, and editor of all kinds of children’s books. Kaitlyn has authored everything from young adult art and craft titles to school textbooks, and children’s chapter books to board books for toddlers. Originally from Boston, where she earned a degree in writing, literature, and publishing from Emerson College, Kaitlyn has spent the last ten years on the West Coast, chasing the surf and the snow.