Dorothy Edwards dreamt up My Naughty Little Sister whilst on a family holiday in 1950. Dorothy based the character on her younger sister, Phyllis, and went on to write five books about her naughty little sister with wide acclaim. Dorothy became a household name and her stories were read and loved across the globe. She became a fixture of a radio show in the 1950s called Read with Mother and she also wrote for Playschool and Jackanory. Dorothy died in 1982, aged 68.

Shirley Hughes was born in 1927. After a year at Liverpool Art School studying costume design, Shirley moved on to the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford. She has written and illustrated over fifty books and sold more than eleven million copies. In both 1977 and 2004 she won the Kate Greenaway Medal and in 1984 she won the Eleanor Farjeon Award. In 1999 she was awarded an OBE for services to children's literature and in 2000 was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.