Brooke Baum is technically a "grown up" with "responsibilities" and "bills," but at heart she’s still the same kid who doodled in her notebook during math class and read Judy Blume way past her bedtime. Of course, she’s obligated to say that doodling in class and staying up past your bedtime is bad and you should never do it--because she’s a grown up now and that's what a grown up would probably say.

She grew up in Huntington Beach, California, but these days she lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and young daughter in a 115 year old house that is definitely not haunted. She writes stories, reads books, draws, and stays up way past her bedtime—all the things that got her into trouble as a kid. Only now, she gets to call it a career.