Howard Schwartz is Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has published three books of poetry, and several books of fiction, including The Captive Soul of the Messiah and Adam's Soul. In addition, Schwartz has also published ten children's books, including Before You Were Born, The Diamond Tree (with Barbara Rush, which won the Sydney Taylor Book Award in 1992), Next Year in Jerusalem: 3000 Years of Jewish Tales, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Aesop Award of the American Folklore Society, both in 1996, A Coat for the Moon (with Barbara Rush, which won Anne Izard Storyeller's Choice Award for 1998 and the 1999 Honor Title of the Storytelling World Awards, and The Day the Rabbi Disappeared: Jewish Holiday Tales of Magic which won the National Jewish Book Award and The Aesop Prize of the American Folklore Society. His book, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, won the National Jewish Book Award for 2005 in the category of Reference. Schwartz lives in St. Louis with his wife Tsila, and his three children, Shira, Nathan and Miriam.

Jasu Hu was born in Hunan, China. She has worked as an illustrator in China for 6 years while studying Visual Communication at Tsinghua University (Beijing). After finishing her MFA in Illustration at MICA (USA), she moved to New York and started working as a freelance illustrator. She won the New Talent of AOI Illustration Award in 2014. The Obama Legacy, a project she illustrated for The Washington Post, has won a national Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding New Approaches in Documentary.