E.L. Konigsburg is the only author to have won the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year. In 1968, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View from Saturday. Among her other acclaimed books are Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World.

Gail E. Haley is a prolific author and illustrator. Her time living in the Caribbean inspired her book A Story, a Story, and she traced the folklore she heard there to their African origins, which she studied extensively before capturing with woodcuts that she cut and printed herself. She lives and works in New York with her family, surrounded by a large collection of early children’s books, toys, games, and dolls going back to the seventeenth century.

Mercer Mayer is an American children’s author and illustrator. He has published over 300 books, using a wide range of illustrative styles.

Gary E. Parker is the best-selling author of ten novels and three novellas, including Secret Tides and Fateful Journeys. A Christy Award finalist, Parker has become CBA's source for sweeping sagas of faith and family. A PhD graduate of Baylor University, he serves as the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia.