With her journey as a reader beginning with a grand tour and introduction of the Johannesburg City library at the age of 5, Mabel Mnensa is an avid reader, poet, children’s author and dreamer with roots in Malawi. Through the Kantiga series, Mabel celebrates Pan-African stories, traditions and histories with magical children’s bedtime stories reimagined from the stories she read and was told growing up.

Chantelle and Burgen Thorne are internationally published illustrators with over 20 years experience in educational publishing. Their most recent focus has been on picture books for children for which they have several titles published. Avid bookworms themselves, they take great delight in the visual storytelling of picture books, art and text working together, every word and every image adding to the reader’s experience.

Both have fond memories of being read to as children and this inspires them to make their illustrations as engaging, honest and relevant to young readers as they possibly can.