While You Are Away

Eileen fell in love with words and decided to become a writer as a young child at Sellers Memorial Library. She is the author of many children’s books, along with being a mother and a grandmother, and currently lives with her husband, Jerry Spinelli, who is also an author in Pennsylvania. When she is not writing books (which she does longhand, and then on an electric typewriter), she enjoys drinking tea, picking herbs, trying on hats and star-gazing with her husband.

Renee Graef received her bachelor’s degree in art from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is the illustrator of numerous titles in the Little House publishing program, as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things and E.T.A Hoffman’s The Nutcracker, adapted by Janet Schulman. She lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, with her husband and two children.