A.E. Cannon is an award-winning writer of fiction for children and young adults. She is also a newspaper columnist, creative writing teacher, and the mother of five sons. Her first young adult novel, Cal Cameron by Day, Spider-Man by Night, won the Delacorte Press Prize for an outstanding first young adult novel. Since then, she has published a number of books, including a collection of her newspaper columns. Subsequent Young Adult novels have been named on the American Library Association's Best Books lists, while her weekly column in the Deseret News has found a wide readership, both in print and on-line.

Ann's latest novel, Charlotte's Rose, was included on the New York City Public Library's 2002 list of outstanding books for children. Drawing on her own Mormon heritage, Ann has created a memorable story about a young Welsh girl named Charlotte Edwards, who helps her father pull a handcart across the prairie to Utah in the mid-1850s. Impetuously, Charlotte takes on the task of carrying a new-born baby girl whose mother has died in childbirth and whose father, overcome with grief at the loss of his young wife, cannot care for his child. Charlotte (who quickly realizes she is in over her head) resents her new responsibility. But as her journey progresses, Charlotte grows to love the baby she calls Rose and hopes that the child will not be reclaimed by her father. Ann's other most-recent works, On the Go with Pirate Pete and Pirate Joe and Let the Good Times Roll with Pirate Pete and Pirate Joe, both illustrated by the talented Elwood H. Smith, are easy-readers about two zany pirate brothers.

Ann credits her life-long passion for books to a childhood illness that put her in bed for a year. "I had strict instructions from our doctor—no walking, no running, no swimming, no biking. With nothing else to do, I was forced to discover books. Before I knew it, books moved into my life permanently, setting up house and lounging around in chairs and on the foot of my bed just like a crowd of favorite cousins. They introduced me to people who had tea parties on the ceiling and others who went down rabbit holes. I eventually got better, but I asked the books to stay anyway. They did."

– from author’s website