Playing War

Author Kathy Beckwith grew up on an Oregon farm. After college, she and her husband Wayne went to India with the Peace Corps to work in village horticulture. Later, a boarding school in South India became home to their family. Back in the U.S., Kathy became a community mediator, a mediation trainer and school mediation coach, a work she has done for nearly three decades in Oregon, and also in India. Their "family sabbatical" tradition has taken them back to "their school" and always back to their Peace Corps village in Karnataka. Like Annie in her young adult novel ENCOUNTER, after discovering another meaning for "Animator," Kathy says, "That's what I hope to be when I really grow up." Kathy is a graduate of Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho (Business Administration), and did a semester of advanced study with the University of the Seven Seas (now "Semester at Sea"). She is a mom and grandma, and a picker of blackberries and baker of berry pies in the summer. She loves to look for "singing places" (which she always tries out), and likes walking on the country road near their home.

Lea Lyon is an award-winning children's book illustrator, painting teacher, and portrait artist who has made a childhood dream come true. Lea loved to draw and paint as a child, and she wanted to be a children's book illustrator. She ended up raising a family, going back to school for an MBA, and working in the corporate world, but she kept painting. Now, at long last, Lea is a children's book illustrator with five published picture books: Say Something, Playing War, Keep Your Ear on the Ball (all with Tilbury), The Miracle Jar and Operation Marriage. She lives in Richmond, California.