I’m Afraid, Said the Leaf

＂Picture book about how each plant and animal has a vital role in the ecosystem＂--

DANIELLE DANIEL is an award-winning author and illustrator whose journey into artmaking and book publishing has gone hand in hand with all she has learned -- and continues to learn -- about her Indigenous ancestry and her relationship with the land. Danielle’s picture books include Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox (winner of the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award and a Best 100 title at the New York Public Library), Sometimes I Feel Like a River and Once in a Blue Moon. She has also illustrated You Hold Me Up by Monique Gray Smith. The author of two novels -- Forever Birchwood for middle-grade readers and Daughters of the Deer for adults, Danielle holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and lives on Manitoulin Island with her family.

MATT JAMES has won many prestigious awards, including the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the New Mexico Book Award, and the Governor General’s Award for Illustration. He illustrated When the Moon Comes by Paul Harbridge and The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson. His author-illustrator debut, The Funeral, was named a New York Times and New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book, and he is the author-illustrator of the recently published Tadpoles (May 2023). As a child, Matt liked to trace comics and pretend that tennis racquets were guitars -- now he lives in Toronto and behaves more like a grown-up.