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Born and raised in Southern California, author Judyth Hopkins Wendkos remembers the many times her siblings spoke of their fun reading fantasies visiting the Wizard in the Emerald City of Oz or flying to Neverland with Peter Pan. Fairy Tales and fiction were a good part of these reading adventures. She was determined to also go on magical adventures. At the age of twelve, her father was awarded a Fulbright Teacher Exchange Scholarship to Helsinki, Finland, where the family resided for a year. There she attended an American school which fostered a deep love of reading, and she was introduced to Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twins. This was the beginning of Judy's travels into reading.Earning her Masters in Library Science, she became a librarian in Washington, D.C., and Southern California, where she settled, got married, and had three boys who continued to venture into their own magical journeys with their heroes in Star Wars, comic books, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings. In troubled times Judy became a single parent raising her three sons and working her school library job where she introduced students to the Harry Potter books, a great influence in her desire to write a book.Once remarried and retired, Judy traveled globally with her new husband for the next twenty years. They visited the real-life settings of magical, fantasy, and historical books. She decided to finally write a story and encouraged her youngest son to provide the illustrations. Her guiding light was that children do not need to grow up so quickly. They get enough reality! Let's not get rid of fairy tales and magical realms to explore. These help young children develop their own imagination, make friendships, and make choices. Illustrator Andrew Michael Smith is a Student of Life who creates, adapts, and evolves. He grew up on the Pacific shores of Southern California in the bustling art and beach community, Laguna Beach. Known as an affluent birthplace of California Landscape Painting and the En Plain Air 19th century art movement, this coastal town molded Andrew's aspiration of learning the Arts from landscape painting, naturalism, realism, abstract, life drawing, and illustration, which all became creative outlets. Growing up, he loved cartoons and animation art: Walt Disney Movies, Looney Tunes, The Jetsons, Flintstones, GI-Joe, He-Man, Transformers, and ThunderCats. They were imaginative stories featuring creative artistry. In his later teens, Andrew discovered Japanese Anime which released a new appreciation of Fantasy and Sci-Fi illustration. Andrew's mother provided him with the brilliant opportunity to collaborate on her book and illustrate Moon Child, Moon Magic. They are delighted to share this magical and inspiring story together.
