Lila Perl was born in Brooklyn, New York. She read a lot, but it never occurred to her that she would eventually become a writer. She began to write for young people when her own kids were in the fourth or fifth grades. She has written both fiction and nonfiction. Her early books included those in the Fat Glenda series, Pieface and Daphne; Don't Ask Miranda, and many others. Her nonfiction titles include Slumps, Grunts, and Snickerdoodles: What Colonial America Ate and Why; Mummies, Tombs, and Treasure: Secrets of Ancient Egypt; and Don't Sing Before Breakfast, Don't Sleep in the Moonlight: Everyday Superstitions and How They Began, the book from which this selection was taken. Her most recent publication is Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story, which she co-authored with Marion Blumenthal Lazan.