When I was seven years old, my parents moved our family to South Korea where they worked as medical missionaries, and which was our home base for the next twenty-one years. This experience of being raised bicultural and bilingual inspired and formed my world view — of global connections among diverse people — and my life’s work as a writer and illustrator of children’s books. People’s differences are glorious and fascinating, and our commonalities bind us together as one family. For the last 38 years, I’ve lived and worked on an island in Maine, where my husband and I raised our two children, and which we now love to explore with our 4-year-old grandson. I’ve published 37 books — some I illustrated, some I wrote, and some I wrote and illustrated.
Award-winning illustrator Connie McLennan has been a freelance artist for over 25 years, since attending Academy of Art College in San Francisco. In addition to illustrating Ready, Set…Wait! (Fall 2010), she has also illustrated Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys & Gulls, The Rainforest Grew All Around, River Beds: Sleeping in the World’s Rivers, Water Beds: Sleeping in the Ocean, and Octavia and her Purple Ink Cloud for Arbordale Publishing. Her studio is at her home in California, where she lives with her husband, teenage son, and one big, black cat. Visit Connie’s website: http: //www.conniemclennan.com/