Santa's First Christmas

MAC BARNETT, the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, is a New York Times-bestselling author of stories for children. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has sold more than five million copies worldwide. Mac's books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Germany’s Jugendliteraturpreis, China's Chen Bochui International Children's Literature Award, The Netherlands' Zilveren Griffel, and Italy's Premio Orbil. He is the co-creator, with Jon Klassen, of the Looking at Picture Books Substack, as well as Shape Island, a stop-motion animated series on Apple TV+, based on their bestselling Shapes series of picture books. Mac lives in Oakland, California.

Sydney Smith is an illustrator of picture books whose work includes Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson; The White Cat and the Monk by Jo Ellen Bogart; and Town Is By the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, which was awarded the 2018 Kate Greenaway Medal. His accolades include two Governor General’s Awards for Illustrated Children’s Books and four successive New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year citations.