Helen Peters grew up on an old-fashioned farm in Sussex, surrounded by family, animals and mud. She spent most of her childhood reading stories and putting on plays in a tumbledown shed that she and her friends turned into a theatre. After university, she became an English and Drama teacher. Her first book, The Secret Hen House Theatre, was published in 2012, and its sequel, The Farm Beneath the Water, in 2015. Helen lives with her husband and children in East Sussex. Ellie Snowdon grew up in South Wales surrounded by books, Welsh cakes and heaps of encouragement from her mum to read and draw stories. After graduating from the Children's Book Illustration MA in Cambridge, Ellie moved to London. She receives a weekly supply of Welsh cakes via post (courtesy of her mum) for drawing fuel.