Grandmother School

Rina Singh is an internationally published children’s author and has written fifteen books for children including A Forest of Stories, which has been translated in several languages. She has written an award-winning biography on the Inuit artist, Pitseolak Ashoona. Her most recent publications are Holi Colors, Diwali: Festival of Lights and Nearly Nonsense, and Guru Nanak. Her upcoming book A Meeting in the Sky is a World War II story. Holi Colors got starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly. Rina has done readings and workshops in schools, libraries, and literary festivals across Canada, including TD Children’s Book Week in 2012 and 2018. In 2014, she also presented at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore and Reading for the Love of it in Toronto (2015). She is an Ontario Certified Teacher and has taught visual arts, drama, and creative writing in Toronto for 25 years. She is also a tdsbCREATES mentor artist for Spoken Word. She lives in a blue house in Toronto. Surrounded by birds, pesky squirrels, a rabbit and goldfish in an outdoor pond, she dreams of writing more stories for children. She also loves elephants but to meet them she has to travel to far away places.

Ellen Rooney, who also illustrated Her Fearless Run, loves illustrating and designing nature-related work. She has her BFA from the University of Victoria. A painter, printmaker, and collage artist, she resides in British Columbia, Canada, with her husband.