The Book of Dragons

E. Nesbit (1858-1924) spent her childhood in France and Germany and later lived in England. She began writing fantasy and adventure stories for children in the early 1890s and is renowned for her strong-willed young characters. Her novels include The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1898), Five Children and It (1902), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Railway Children (1906).

H. R. Millar (1869-1942) was a Scottish artist whose illustrations were included in such works as George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life, Rudyard Kipling's Kim, and Puck of Pook's Hill, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales.

Ruth Stiles Gannett wrote My Father's Dragon just a few years after her graduation from Vassar College in 1944. It was an immediate success, becoming a Newbery Honor Book, and was soon followed by two sequels, Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland. All three dragon stories have been continuously in print in the more than 40 years since their publication. The author's other books include Katie and the Sad Noise and The Wonderful House-Boat-Train. She is married to the artist and calligrapher Peter Kahn. They have seven daughters and seven grandchildren.