Gemma and the Giant Girl

SARA O’LEARY is a writer of fiction for both adults and children. Her most recent picture book include Maud and Grand-Maud, Owls are Good at Keeping Secrets and the forthcoming This Is Ruby. Sara’s picture book This Is Sadie was adapted by the New York City Children’s Theatre. Her adult novel A Ghost in the House was published by Doubleday Canada. A graduate of the UBC Creative Writing Program, she has taught screenwriting and writing for children at Concordia University in Montreal.

MARIE LAFRANCE studied Graphic Arts and Etching, worked as a printmaker in San Francisco and New York, and eventually started illustrating, a career which is not really a career as much as a lifestyle, so she basically lives in her studio, cooking up characters and trying to give graphic life to authors’ great stories. In the past twenty years, Marie has been illustrating mostly children’s books and now serves on the board of the Association des Illustrateurs et Illustratrices du Quebec (AIIQ), where she is also a part-president. Her work was nominated three times for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and she won the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award for A Hen for Izzy Pippik, which was also a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year. Marie lives in Montreal, Quebec, with her family.