John Mantha is a Toronto-based artist and illustrator. He grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and graduated with honors from the Ontario College of Art and Design.#His major commissions include the design of 12 coins for the Royal Canadian Mint, one of which was chosen coin of the year. He has done commemorative pieces for the Ford Motor Company and the Toronto Transit Commission, as well as 34 paintings for the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel. Other clients have included Fox Television, Imperial Oil, Penguin Books, Annick Press, Kids Can Press and Cottage Life magazine. Working for book publishers, advertising agencies, magazines, corporations, television and movies, his work has been seen throughout North America. His paintings, done in oils, have been exhibited in galleries across Ontario and hang in corporate and private collections. He freelances for CTV and The Globe and Mail as a courtroom artist.#Thus far, John has illustrated 26 books, including The Kids Book of Canada’s Railway, which won The Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada 2001 Information Book Award and was an official selection for the 2003 Red Cedar Book Awards. The Kids Book of Canadian Exploration was nominated for the 2006 Hackmatack Award for nonfiction. The Kids Book of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada was nominated for one of the BC Book Prizes, the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize. The Kids Book of Canada at War was nominated for the 2009 Ontario Library Association Red Maple Award.#John works in oils and oil-wash, and uses Photoshop to enhance the finished piece. His style is realistic in nature, with an emphasis on texture. He uses Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for design work.#He lives in Toronto with his wife, Leanne; his daughter, Lauren; Bella the dog and Charlotte the cat. John is an avid golfer and has played since he was 16 years old.#Fun fact: He has appeared in two movies — Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story and Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story. He portrayed a courtroom artist in both movies, and the sketches that he made were used.

Esperança Melo was born in the Azores, and has made her home in the village of Millbrook, Ontario. She is a graduate of Sheridan College’s Animation Program, as well as a Graphic Design honors graduate from George Brown College.#Esperança works in various art forms and media, including sculpting in papier-mâché. She has illustrated several children’s books, including Love You More by author Susan Musgrave, and co-illustrated with Bill Slavin the picture book Drumheller Dinosaur Dance by author Robert Heidbreder, which was the recipient of the 2005 Blue Spruce Award in Ontario and the 2006 Chocolate Lily Award in British Columbia.

Martine Gourbault was born in Paris and emigrated to Toronto with her family in 1957. She received her basic art education at Central Technical School, graduating in 1961. “I was very fortunate to have parents who appreciated the value of artistic pursuits and were not worried about whether I could make a living as an artist. I’ll always be grateful to them for steering me in the right direction”. #While in her third year at art school, she won a competition to illustrate a fictional story for the Teen Tempo section of Chatelaine magazine, for which she received the handsome sum of $200. This felt like success and definitely served to re-enforce Martine’s budding interest in illustration. However, her art career was to take her into other directions for a few years. As she became involved in design and art direction for magazines such as Chatelaine, Miss Chatelaine, Flare and enRoute. Nonetheless, her interest in illustration was never left too far behind, and she made a point of squeezing in as many free-lance assignments as she could, including, eventually, a number of illustrations for Owl and Chickadee and Nelson Canada. This was her first introduction to illustrating for children. #While living in New York, in 1989-90, Martine was given the opportunity to illustrate her first picture book for Greenwillow (The Little girl and the Dragon) and more projects were to follow from them and other publishers in the U.S., and the United Kingdom, where she lived between 1990 and 1997.#In February 1997, she moved to Vancouver and began her association with Kids Can Press for whom she has to date illustrated seven books, including the Dragon Safety series. Martine is also interested in pursuing her more personal work which she has shown in a number of galleries in British Columbia and Alberta.#She is an SFCA member of the Federation of Canadian Artists where she has received several awards. “As long as I’m involved in a task which is artistic and creative, I feel I’m in the right place, but illustrating children’s books has a special dimension to it. It challenges me to explore the scope of my imagination and my abilities as an artist. I love the magical process of inventing characters and getting involved in their stories”.

For more than half a century, Ted Harrison’s artwork has inspired the world. His colorful and somewhat whimsical depictions of the Canadian Northwest delight viewers both young and old alike. #Born in 1926, in the village of Wingate County Durham, England, Ted began to create art at a young age — despite his art teacher telling him he had no talent for it! #Ted never gave up and even attended Art College in Hartlepool during the Second World War. And since he knows that a life as an artist can be hard, he also earned himself a teaching certificate. #Ted and his wife lived in several countries around the world before finally settling in Carcross, Yukon. Here he taught art and painted the inspirational landscapes of the north. He painted the mountains, buildings, people and animals of the Yukon the way they looked in his mind. It is this subject matter that the artist is best known for today.

Stéphane Jorisch is an illustrator whose imaginative work has won many awards, including the prestigious Governor General’s Award for Children’s Illustration. His works are produced in watercolor, gouache and also pen and ink, following in the footsteps of his father who illustrated comic strips for newspapers in Europe. Stéphane’s first book, Oma’s Quilt, won the Ruth Schwartz Children’s Book Award and was shortlisted for the Blue Spruce Award. His second project, Suki’s Kimono, was named an Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award Honour Book. Stéphane has illustrated two titles in the KCP Visions in Poetry series, including Jabberwocky, and his latest, The Owl and The Pussycat. They both won the Governor General’s Awards for Illustration. In addition to his books for young people, Stéphane Jorisch also illustrates for magazines and has created designs for the renowned Cirque de Soleil. Stéphane was born in Brussels and grew up in Lachine, Quebec. He now lives in Montreal with his girlfriend and their three children.