Wade Hudson (BooksByWadeHudson.com) has written over thirty-five books for young readers, including the picture book The Day Madear Voted; the middle grade memoir Defiant: Growing Up in the Jim Crow South (winner of the Malka Penn Award); and the anthologies The Talk (a New York Times Best Book of the Year), We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, and Recognize! An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life (all co-edited with his wife, Cheryl Willis Hudson). His recent middle grade novel, The Reckoning, was a Black Caucus of the American Library Association / School Library Journal 2025 Honor Award recipient and was named a Best Book of 2025 by the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature and the Bank Street College of Education. The president and co-founder of Just Us Books, Inc., he speaks around the country about issues of inclusion and diversity and has received numerous honors, including the Children’s Book Council’s Diversity Achievement Award and an Eric Carle Honor. He lives in East Orange, New Jersey.

Keith Mallett (KeithMallett.com) also illustrated Sharing the Dream by Shelia P. Moses, Sing a Song by Kelly Starling Lyons, Ice Cream Man by Glenda Armand and Kim Freeman, How Jelly Roll Morton Invented Jazz by Jonah Winter, and Take a Picture of Me, James VanDerZee by Andrea J. Loney. His work was commissioned to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s historic breakthrough into Major League Baseball, and the Franklin Mint and Lenox Collections have created collectibles of his work. He lives in California.