Nikki Giovanni, poet, activist, mother, and professor, is a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, among many other honors. The author of twenty-eight books and a Grammy nominee for The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, she is the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Marisabina Russo's warm, distinctive picture books usually mirror everyday scenarios from her own family's life. The Big Brown Box was inspired by her three children's tendency to entertain themselves—and each other—with common household objects (which included many a cardboard box).
Ms. Russo has written and illustrated many picture books for children, and has illustrated several by other authors. She and her husband and children live in Westchester County, New York.
