Ant Plays Bear

Betsy Byars is a Newbery Medal winner and a National Book Award winner. Her first children’s book was published in 1962, after it had been rejected nine times. Since then, her works have appeared on the best books lists of the American Library Association, School Library Journal, and American Bookseller. She is best known for her Blossom Family series and Summer of the Swans.

Marc Simont (1915–2013) illustrated nearly a hundred books, among them James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks and a 1990 edition of Thurber’s Many Moons. He worked with such authors as Marjorie Weinman Sharmat (on the Nate the Great series) and Margaret Wise Brown and won both a Caldecott Honor and a Caldecott Medal for his illustrations of children’s books.