Monica Brown, Ph.D. is the author of many award-winning books for children, including Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People, winner of the Américas Award for Children's Literature and an Orbis Pictus Honor for Outstanding Nonfiction, and Waiting for the Biblioburro, a Christopher Award winner. She is a Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, specializing in U.S. Latino Literature and Multicultural Literature. She is a recipient of the prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship on Chicano Cultural Literacies from the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Flagstaff, Arizona.