About the Author

Doug MacLeod is a Melbourne writer of books and TV. In 2008 the Australian Writers' Guild awarded him the Fred Parsons award for contribution to Australian comedy. (He has worked as a writer on shows such as Fast Forward and SeaChange, and as script editor on three seasons of Kath and Kim.)

He also devised and co-wrote the animated series Dogstar, which has been screened all over the world. Doug received two Australian Writers' Guild awards for his scripts for series one, as well as the inaugural John Hinde award for science fiction. His best known book is Sister Madge's Book of Nuns, which started as a practical joke on a publisher. He left his full-time TV job in 2002 to focus on writing books for young adults. So far he has had seven novels published by Penguin. The most recent are The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher, a CBCA Honour Book in 2012 shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the Aurealis Awards, and The Shiny Guys, shortlisted for the 2013 CBCA Book of the Year Awards. One of his novels, The Clockwork Forest, was presented as a play by The Sydney Theatre Company in 2008, and in 2013 he wrote Margaret Fulton: Queen of the Dessert, a musical about the life of Margaret Fulton.

dougmacleod.com.au Craig Smith is one of Australia's most prolific, popular and award-winning illustrators of children's books. He began illustrating in 1976 and his first book was Christobel Mattingley's Black Dog followed soon after by Geoffrey Dutton's The Prowler. His witty and humorous artwork combines a wonderful sense of the absurd with a fine attention to detail. He has illustrated over 370 picture books, junior novels and educational readers. Some of his many picture books include Where's Mum? (CBCA Honour Book), Billy the Punk (CBCA Shortlisted Book), Bob the Builder and the Elves and Sister Madge's Book of Nuns. He is also the author/illustrator of a book about a notorious local cat, Remarkably Rexy. Craig lives in Melbourne.