Margot Thompson is an illustrator and designer. Most of her illustration work has been for magazines, but she has also illustrated several books for children.#Margot started drawing when she was very young, mainly because her older sister was already drawing and so Margot joined in. Her earliest “works” were crayon drawings of princesses. Because she wanted them to be life-size or even bigger, Margot would tape sheets of paper together in long rows and make giant princesses.#During high school and university, Margot focused on another love: science. She received a degree in biology from the University of Toronto. Rather than working in science, though, she decided to study art at the Ontario College of Art and Design. This led to a career as a freelance illustrator and as a designer at the Royal Ontario Museum, keeping her very busy.

Born in Toronto, Pat Stephens came to illustration after having been a fine artist, signwriter, paste-up artist, calligrapher and magazine art director. Her childhood hours — and hours! — spent drawing horses made it easy to illustrate the many animal books she’s done for KCP.#While majoring in modern languages at the University of Toronto, Pat took a fine art studio course “just for fun”. Several years of serious painting and a few gallery shows followed. At 28 she returned to school to study Graphic Design at George Brown College, after which she worked primarily as a paste-up artist, doing magazine illustration on the side.#When manual paste-up became obsolete, Pat turned to illustration in earnest. A book she wrote and illustrated about her cat, Nickie, led to her association with Kids Can Press in the mid 1990s.~ ~Pat had her first child at the ripe old age of 48 and they live in Durham, Ontario, a town small enough that they can be biking along country roads or walking in the woods in minutes. They share their home with several pets and enjoy cooking, woodworking, gardening and reading in front of the fireplace.

Shelagh Armstrong graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in studio arts and art history before studying Communication and Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design. She grew up with an awareness of the fine arts through her mother’s love of the fine and editorial (Victorian) arts.#Professionally illustrating for over twenty years, Shelagh’s career has spanned across a variety of industries including retail advertising; courtroom sketching for television; package illustrating for private and public companies; and commemorative coin designing for the Royal Canadian Mint, including commemorative coins for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.#Her acclaimed design work and revered illustrations allowed her to reenter the editorial world when she was asked to illustrate If the World Were a Village for Kids Can Press, winner of the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award. Following the success of her first children’s book, Shelagh also illustrated If America Were a Village .