Sharelle Byars Moranville is the author of Over the River, which Booklist named a Top Ten Youth First Novels and called "beautifully written" in a starred review, The Hop which won the Nature Generation Green Earth Book Award and the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature and A Higher Geometry which was a Booklist Top 10 Romance for Youth and a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. When she isn't reading or writing, she is often gardening or taking photographs near her home in Southern Illinois.