Nancy Turgeon majored in Creative Writing at Ohio Wesleyan University and co-founded her own ad agency at age 27. Seeds for The Alekizou were sown by her second grade teacher who challenged the class to find words without any vowels. In addition to writing children's books, she has her own puppet theater and more than 100 puppets! Over the past 35 years, Washington, DC area illustrator Patricia Raine has occasionally taken a recess from the complex, grown-up world of political caricature and visual editorial commentary to create richly-imagined paintings for the infinitely sweeter and simpler world of children.