Begin with a Bee

Liza Ketchum is author of seventeen books for young people, including The Life Fantastic, a YA historical novel. She was a founding faculty member at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program, and her books have appeared on the ALA’s Best Book lists and the New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing. A citizen scientist volunteer, her articles about the natural world have appeared in newspapers and on public radio.

Jacqueline Briggs Martin is author of twenty-one picture books for children, including Snowflake Bentley, a Caldecott medal winner in 1999. Her books Creekfinding: A True Story, which received a Green Earth Award for Environmental Writing for Children and a Riverby Award for exceptional natural history books for young readers, and Bim, Bam, Bop . . . and Oona are published by University of Minnesota Press. In 2008 she received the Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature from the Sterling North Society.

Phyllis Root has written more than fifty books for children, including, also from Minnesota, Big Belching Bog, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, One North Star, and The Lost Forest, which won a National Outdoor Book Award. She has twice won the Riverby Award. Aunt Nancy and Old Man Trouble won the Minnesota Book Award, Big Momma Makes the World won the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, and Lucia and the Light was awarded a McKnight Fellowship. She has also written Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers: A Guide for Beginners, Botanists, and Everyone in Between (Minnesota, 2018).

Claudia McGehee is author/illustrator of eight picture books. She works in scratchboard, a unique medium that celebrates nature with lively, woodcut-like lines. Her historical fiction My Wilderness, an Alaskan Adventure (Iowa Author Award) and her illustrations for North Woods Girl (Midwest Booksellers Choice Award) by Aimee Bissonette both received honors from the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, and A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet and A Woodland Counting Book received Moonbeam Gold and Midwest Booksellers Choice Awards. She also illustrated Creekfinding: A True Story by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (Minnesota, 2017).