Whitney Sanderson is the daughter of Horse Diaries illustrator Ruth Sanderson. Her family has owned horses since she was a child, and her bookshelves were always filled with horse stories. When she isn't writing, she volunteers at a horse rescue and therapeutic riding center. She has an Appaloosa named Thor, who posed as the model for Golden Sun.

Ruth Sanderson grew up with a love for horses. She drew them constantly, and her first oil painting, at age fourteen, was a horse portrait.

Ruth has illustrated and retold many fairy tales and likes to feature horses in them whenever possible. Her book about a magical horse, The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring, won the Texas Bluebonnet Award in 2003. She illustrated the first Black Stallion paperback covers and a number of chapter books about horses, most recently Summer Pony and Winter Pony by Jean Slaughter Doty.

To find out more about her adventures with horses and the research she did to create the illustrations in this book, visit her Web site, www.ruthsanderson.com.