Kim Bellefontaine grew up in a military family and had the opportunity to live and study across Canada and Europe. She graduated from Ottawa’s Algonquin College as a Museum Technologist and worked in that field in both Germany and Canada. During that period she found that her interest lay in children’s education and worked on education programs within museums. Her first book, ABC of Canada, is an introduction to our country at the primary level. Kim teamed with a friend who was a known children’s book illustrator for her three published works. #Kim is currently living in Kingston, Ontario, with her two children, Emily and Ben. She is presently expanding her education at St. Lawrence College, but is always looking for and working on new projects.

L. M. (Lucy) Falcone was a couch potato growing up and loved watching television. Her parents were immigrants, and rarely did a book find its way into her home — that is, until she discovered the local library. Encouraged by her beloved grade 5 teacher (Mrs. Cherwaty) to read her short stories aloud to the class, Lucy felt a spark ignite that has never been extinguished. She knew from the tender age of ten that she wanted to be a writer, although along the way she also became a teacher and a private investigator. Eventually she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her writing career. During that time she wrote for such series as The Littlest Hobo, New Monkees and Nickelodeon’s hugely popular Are You Afraid of the Dark?#Upon returning to Canada, Lucy remembered the excitement young viewers had for the spooky Are You Afraid of the Dark? stories and began writing supernatural thrillers for the same preteen audience. She loves writing for this age group because they still believe in magic — and so does she! #Her novels The Mysterious Mummer, Walking with the Dead, The Midnight Curse and The Devil, the Banshee and Me have garnered multiple nominations and several wins, including the Silver Birch, Red Maple and Diamond Willow awards.#Lucy is currently writing the comedic chapter book detective series The Ghost and Max Monroe.

YES Mag is a bimonthly science magazine that makes a wide range of science, technology, and engineering topics fun and accessible to readers young and old. Every issue brings science to life through colourful illustrations and photographs, fascinating articles, fun facts, and hands-on experiments.#YES Mag has been publishing for more than a decade and during that time has won numerous honours and awards including the Michael Smith Award for science promotion and the Eve Savory Award for science communication.~The YES Mag editorial team have written three other books: Fantastic Feats and Failures, The Amazing International Space Station, and Science Detectives. The YES Mag editorial team includes Jude Isabella, Adrienne

David J. Smith is a classroom teacher with over 25 years experience teaching middle and high school English, geography and social studies. He achieved national recognition for his unique method of teaching seventh graders to draw maps of the entire world from memory, now published as a highly successful curriculum, “Mapping the World by Heart”. In 1992, Smith won the U.S. Department of Education’s “A+ for Breaking the Mold” Award for his work. Since 1992, he has been a full-time educational consultant, giving lectures and workshops on informational technologies, geography and global issues to teachers, parents, student groups and others throughout the United States and in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.#Time magazine, NBC’s Today Show, the L.A. Times and the Associated Press, among others, have acknowledged Smith and the success of his curriculum. Smith has also written articles for The New York Times Education Life section, “The International Educator” and “The World Paper”. #Through his work with teachers, Smith developed the idea of creating a realistic picture of the world that would be understandable and accessible to young people. By imagining a village where each inhabitant represented 62 million individuals, David was able to pare Earth’s population down to a village of 100 people. The result is If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People.#Upon shrinking the world’s population, proportions and relationships become more meaningful, statistics more manageable. Based on published figures, If the World Were a Village reveals some startling disparities. For instance, in the world village, there are 38 school-aged villagers — but of the 38 only 31 of them attend school and only 24 of them have enough food to eat. The world keeps changing and growing, and the data in the book has been kept current; between 2002 and 2014, it has been updated 23 times.#Smith believes that this book promotes “world-mindedness”, which is an attitude, an approach to life. At a time when parents and educators are looking to help children gain a better understanding of the world’s peoples and their ways of life, If the World Were a Village is a unique and objective resource. Through the surprising statistics and Smith’s tips on fostering a world view, children are encouraged to embrace the bigger picture and to establish their own place in the global village.#David Smith was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He has lived in England, Hawaii and Oregon, but now lives in Victoria, British Columbia.