Barbara Goldin is an award-winning author of 22 books for children and families. In 1997, she received the prestigious Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. This award is presented to the author whose collected works are a distinguished contribution to Jewish literature for children. She is currently also the director of a public library in Western Massachusetts. For ten years she taught language arts and creative writing to 5th through 8th graders and for eleven years before that she was a preschool teacher. Her B.A. is in psychology from the University of Chicago. Goldin later received her Master in Library and Information Sciences (MLIS) degree from Simmons College, and completed post-graduate work in teaching and school library media at Western Washington University and Boston University. Some of her book titles include Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible, co-authored with Jane Yolen and illustrated by Vali Mintzi, non-fiction for 10  year olds and up, the picture book A Persian Princess, illustrated by Steliyana Doneva, and the historical fiction book for 9-11 year olds, Fire: The Beginnings of the Labor Movement, illustrated by James Watling.