Authors

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including Wild Dreamers, a Pura Belpré Honor book that was also long listed for the National Book Award. Wings in the Wild received an International Latino Book Award Gold Medal, and The Surrender Tree, received a Newbery Honor.

Other awards includes Pura Belpré Medals, Walter Honors, Américas Awards, a Jane Addams Award, a PEN U.S.A. Award, and the NSK Neustadt Prize. Margarita served as the national  2017-2019 Young People's Poet Laureate. Her newest picture books include Hopeful Heroes and Christiana Figueres, Friend of the Rain Forest. Her most recent verse novels areIsland Creatures and Evamar.

Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother's homeland during childhood summers with relatives on the island. She studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing, and now lives in central California with her entomologist husband and soccer playing Border Collie.

Gennifer Choldenko is the Newbery Honor author of the beloved Al Capone Does My Shirts now in its 44th printing, and co-author of the New York Times bestselling Dogtown with the one and only Katherine Applegate. Gennifer’s most recent book, The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman has garnered 4 starred reviews, an Indie Next and JLG selection, and an Amazon Best Children’s Book So Far This Year (July 2024). “Choldenko speaks from the heart in this compelling story,” Booklist said in a starred review. The second book in the Dogtown series Mouse and His Dog launches September 2024. Gennifer lives in Northern California with her loyal husband, her clever daughter, and her sleepy dog.