Claude Ponti is a French illustrator and children’s author known for his inventive and playful use of words and the symbolic nature of his illustrations. His first book, L’Album d’Adèle, written for his newborn daughter, already displays the associative and dream-like presentation of children’s interior lives that characterizes many of his works. Ponti was awarded the 2006 Sorcières Spécial prize for his contribution to literature, which now includes over seventy books of all types and for all ages.
Alyson Waters is a translator of modern and contemporary literary fiction, criticism and theory, as well as art history. Her book translations include works by Vassilis Alexakis, Louis Aragon, Daniel Arasse, René Belletto, Reda Bensmaia, Emmanuel Bove, Eric Chevillard, Albert Cossery, Yasmina Khadra, and Tzvetan Todorov. She teaches literary translation workshops at Yale University and at New York University, and now at Columbia. In addition to her work as a translator and teacher, she has been the editor of Yale French Studies for almost twenty years. She is the translator of Claude Ponti’s My Valley, Hiznobyuti, and Blaze and the Castle Cake for Bertha Daye (Elsewhere Editions).
Margot Kerlidou is a photographer, French tutor, and herbalist. Claude Ponti was her favorite author when she was a child.

"Confident, bristly-haired Meeselphe tumbles headfirst into a whimsical world of riddles, monsters, and magical landscapes. Malivicious monsters stand in her way and nothing is as it seems in this whimsical and sometimes unfriendly world, but Meeselphe isn't fazed: she has an answer for every riddle and a red paintbrush for every self-conscious ladybug. In detailed illustrations and Claude Ponti's trademark wordplay, cleverly rendered in this inventive translation, young readers will experience the thrill of adventure and the pleasure of coming home again."