Meet the Mighty Helpers

Laura Purdie Salas is the author of more than 125 books for children, including If You Were the Moon, the award winning Can Be . . . series, and BookSpeak! Poems About Books, which was an NCTE Notable Book of Poetry and won the Nerdy Book Award for Poetry, among other honors. She lives with her family in Plymouth, Minnesota. Visit her at laurasalas.com.

Julia Patton is an illustrator, author, and designer, who has also run a freelance greeting card business since 1994 and has periodically taught in BA and MA programs at various universities. She has illustrated more than 56 books, including 7 that she also wrote. Her author-illustrator title The Very Very Very Long Dog was on the Kids Indie Next Picks List and became a Dreamscape animation. She says, “I’m a huge advocate of silly . . . [and] probably due to this I’m irritatingly 99.9 % happy at all times.” She lives in Tyne & Wear, England.