Opal Whiteley grew up in logging settlements near the town of Cottage Grove, at the southern end of Oregon's Willamette Valley. A child literary prodigy and acclaimed nature teacher, she is the author of
The Fairyland Around Us, a self-published nature book for children (1918) and her bestselling childhood diary,
The Story of Opal (1920).
Benjamin Hoff grew up in a rural area a few miles from Portland, Oregon--at the opposite end of the valley in which Opal Whiteley wrote her diary. As a child, he, like Opal, preferred to spend his time outdoors, observing animals, insects, and plants. From an early age, he, too, loved to write. He is tha author of the bestselling The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet.