Celebrating her birthday on April 29th, award-winning British author and educator Jill Paton Walsh started writing at the ripe old age of 26 and hasn't stopped since.

"The people I write about are real to me," she says. "I seem able to hear them talking in my head. I don't make up what they say, I just listen and write it down."

It can take as long as three years to write a book like Emperor's Winding Street (1974). "I had to learn Greek to read background." Walsh reports. Others such as Babylon (1982) come from her inner musing to the page in a very short amount of time. 

She keeps a notebook with her at all times, scribbling things down as they come to her. "If I ever need an idea I can go lucky-dipping in my notebook."

Illustrator, author, teacher, dad, cross-country coach, dog-handler, and husband, Erik Brooks has a lot of practice at doing a lot of things. He's moved around a lot, but he was born in one place on April 29th: Wisconsin. He's lived throughout the Midwest and Northwest, gaining a degree in studio art from Carleton College and a K-12 teaching certificate.

Erik published his first book, The Practically Perfect Pajamas, about Percy the polar bear, in 2000. He has been creating successful picture books ever since, including Octavius Bloom and the House of Doom, Monkey Business, Slow Days, Fast Friends; Totem Tale, Boo's Dinosaur, and Dog Diaries, his newest title. Erik currently lives in the state of Washington with his wife and daughter.

Happy birthday, Erik! Read more about him by clicking here.

Barbara Juster Esbensen was born on April 28, 1925, in Madison, Wisconsin. She was a poet, teacher, and inspiration for many. Swing Around the Sun, her first book, was published in 1965. It was recently reissued by Lerner Publications in a handsome edition illustrated  by four Minnesota illustrators, one for each season of the year.

Her book, A Celebration of Bees, was written for teachers and parents who want to help children write creatively.

She died very suddenly of cancer in 1996, having published twenty-one books that celebrated the joy of every-day life, sometimes through a child’s eyes and sometimes through her own, but always with a perceptive point of view.

Lois Duncan grew up in Sarasota, Florida and celebrates her birthday on April 28th.  She knew she wanted to be a writer early on and regularly sold articles to Seventeen Magazine throughout her teen years. She sold her first book at the age of twenty. Best known for her brilliant psychological suspense novels, she creates her work with careful construction and tight plotting. Killing Mr. Griffin and I Know What You Did Last Summer have been made into box office hits. The book closest to her heart is Who Killed My Daughter?, following the Heart-wrenching account of the murder of her own daughter, Kaitlyn. Unsatisfied with the police department conclusion of a random shooting, Duncan launched her own investigation, leading to underworld gangs and psychic detectives.

With so much drama in her own life, Duncan changed to lighter fare after that— The Circus Comes Home, about the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The Longest Hair in the World, illustrated by Jon McIntosh, is her most recent title. Duncan lives and writes in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ludwig Bemelmans was born April 27, 1898 in Meran, Austria, which today is in Italy.  When he was eight his parents divorced and he and his mother went to live with her family in Regensburg, Germany.

Ludwig was a "busy boy." He attended various schools and private academies but failed at most of them. When his mother was at wit’s end she sent him to live with his uncle who owned a number of hotels. Ludwig worked as an apprentice in the wait staff for two years before being dismissed and immigrating to New York in 1914.

Bemelmans’ writing often contains experiences from him own life. His first adult book, My War with the United States, is actually a translation of the diary he kept during his World War I service.

It was May Massee, the famous children's book editor for Viking Press, who suggested Bemelmans write for children. His first book, published in 1934, was Hansi. Ludwig Bemelmans is most well-known for Madeline, a picture book about a Parisian schoolgirl who becomes the envy of her classmates when her appendix is removed. Madeline's Rescue, the second book in the series, was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1953.

He married Madeline Freund in 1935 and they had one daughter, Barbara. Bemelmans died October 1, 1962 in New York of pancreatic cancer. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Born on April 26th, prolific writer, teacher, and editor Patricia Reilly Giff has many individual titles to her credit as well as the Kids of Polk Street series and the New Kids of Polk Street series. Another series she writes is Polka Dot Private Eye. Many readers will be familiar with Giff’s The War Began at Supper (1991) and The Gift of the Pirate Queen (1982). In 2003, Pictures of Hollis Woods was recognized with a Newbery Honor. Lily's Crossing was similarly honored in 1998. Giff writes mainly for middle graders stressing “all of us are special—important because we are ourselves.” She was born in Brooklyn, New York. Giff received her undergraduate degree from Marymount University, her master's degree from St. John's University, and her professional reading diploma from Hofstra University.

Walter de la Mare, born April 25, 1873 (pen name Walter Ramal) was born at Charlton, Kent, in the south of England. His mother, Lucy Sophia, was related to the poet Robert Browning. His career as a writer began around 1895 and he published to the end of his life. De la Mare wrote for both adults and children. His best-known book was written in 1921. Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The story is set in the world of the small Miss Thomasina. De la Mare published many books of poetry. The settings were often the English seacoasts and the world of nature. His themes centered around childhood, dreams, and everyday events; often with a touch of mystery. His children's verse and stories include: Peacock Pie: a Book of Rhymes, Broomsticks and Other Tales, Three Mulla Mulgars (later re-titled The Three Royal Monkeys). Walter de la Mare died at Twickenham, near London, on June 22, 1958. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, probably on April 23, 1564, and died on April 23, 1616. Much of what we think we know about the Bard’s life is inference, educated guesses, and conjecture.

His father, John Shakespeare, was a prosperous businessman and alderman of Stratford. His mother was Mary Arden.

Shakespeare is thought to have attended Stratford Grammar School, but did not go on to study at university.

At the age of 18, in 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior. Their marriage produced two daughters and a son. In 1587, Shakespeare left for London, although Anne remained in Stratford her entire life.

During his lifetime, Shakespeare was a businessman, a landowner, an actor, and a theater owner, but it is as a poet and playwright that he is best known and remembered today. He published five long poems and 154 sonnets, many of which are studied in English classes to this day. He wrote 38 plays, which are still performed on stages around the world, and have been turned into numerous motion pictures. His first plays were The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors, in 1589. His final three plays were The Two Noble Kinsmen in 1611, Canderio (of which no written copy survives) in 1612, and Henry VIII in 1613. The plays for which Shakespeare is perhaps best known among young adults were written in the middle of his career: Romeo and Juliet (1594), Julius Caesar (1599), Hamlet (1600), and Macbeth (1606). Considering the popularity of the Bard’s works nearly four centuries after his death, the playwright Ben Jonson provided a fitting tribute to Shakespeare when he wrote in 1641 that Shakespeare’s works were “not of an age, but for all time.”