Ron Lightburn is an internationally renowned illustrator of books for children. He has currently completed a picture book, Wild Girl and Gran by Nan Gregory. He has collaborated with Nan Gregory once before, on the award-winning How Smudge Came. His illustrations in the picture book Waiting for the Whales earned him the Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Illustration, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award for Illustration and the Elizabeth Mrazik Cleaver Picture Book Award.