Ryoji Arai was born in Yamagata, Japan, in 1956. He has an illustrative style all his own: bold, mischievous, and unpredictable. Arai studied art at Nippon University. His art is at once genuine and truly poetic, encouraging children to paint and to tell their own stories. He took the Japanese picture book world by storm in the 1990s. Since then, he has won multiple awards, including the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005, and was Japan's nominee for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2022. David Boyd is an associate professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the translator of adult fiction by Izumi Suzuki, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, and Kanoko Okamoto, among others, as well as the beloved Chirri & Chirra picture book series published by Enchanted Lion. His translations have appeared in Monkey Business International, Granta, and Words Without Borders, among other publications.