Tom Nancy

MAC BARNETT, the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is a New York Times-bestselling author of stories for children. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has sold more than five million copies worldwide. Mac’s books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Germany’s Jugendliteraturpreis, China’s Chen Bochui International Children’s Literature Award, The Netherlands’ Zilveren Griffel, and Italy’s Premio Orbil. He is the co-creator, with Jon Klassen, of the Looking at Picture Books Substack, as well as Shape Island, a stop-motion animated series on Apple TV+, based on their bestselling Shapes series of picture books. Mac lives in Oakland, California

X. FANG, who also goes by Susan, is a visual artist and maker of books for young readers, including Dim Sum Palace, winner of the 2023 Society of Illustrators’ Dilys Evans Founder’s Award among other honors, and We Are Definitely Human, the recipient of 5 starred reviews and Broken, an Indie Next Pic. She exhibits her art throughout the U.S. and internationally and has worked professionally as a graphic designer and art director for film and television studios. Born in Taichung, Taiwan, raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she now lives in rural Maine with her husband, son and their dog, Pamela.