About the Authors

Sue Hepker was born and educated in South Africa, where she taught English and developed a passion for developing children’s books. She published The Little Library, containing a series of 20 multicultural books for young children. The Little Library won the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award at the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna. In 1996, she emigrated with her husband and two children to Chicago, where she continued to work in the field of early literacy development.

This is the Challah is her first book to be written specifically for Jewish children, and was inspired both by her grand daughter and by the wonderful Jewish community in Lakeview, Chicago. 

Amy Wummer has been working in the field of illustration since the early nineties. She is known primarily as a children’s book illustrator, with more than sixty titles to her credit. Amy specializes in whimsical, lighthearted themes and works in pencil, ink, and watercolors.

Amy received the Highlights for Children Cover of the Year award in 1998, 2007, and 2009, the 2006 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, Highlights for Children Illustrator of the Month award in October 2003 and November 2007, and was a 2002 Gold Medallion Book Award finalist.

She and her husband, Mark, also an artist, live in Pennsylvania. They are the parents of three grown children, Jesse, Maisie, and Adam.