About the Authors
About the Author
Velma Hildegarde Ford Morrison, a Drake University Graduate, taught school, married, and ran a dairy with her husband of sixty years. She studied genetics as a hobby and was a pioneer in the area of hybrid chicks and hybrid seed corn. Later in life she studied archaeology and traveled the globe. When she couldn't find books she felt were suitable for children she ordered books about publishing from the library and started the Morrison Book Company where she published some fifteen books for children, authoring the books under her maiden name, Hildegarde Ford, and running the business under her married name, Velma Morrison. Mrs. Morrison raised four children, fifteen grandchildren, twenty-seven great-grandchildren, and two great-great grandchildren at the time of her death, April 14, 2007, just two weeks shy of her 98th birthday. The Morrison family has directed memorials to the Matson Public Library in Princeton, IL.
About the Illustrator
Mary Win Walter Norris lives in the 150-year old Victorian family home where she grew up in Princeton, IL. Mrs. Norris, 93, attended the University of Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois. She studied art at the Art Students League in New York and at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art. She still paints occasionally in her studio where she has done hundreds, maybe thousands, of portraits and landscapes - the same studio where she painted the illustrations for My Go to Bed Book. She taught art at Princeton High School for many years, and is a highly regarded member of her community where her work hangs in many of the local buildings and businesses, from the hospital to the Presbyterian Church.