Sophia Spencer has loved bugs ever since a butterfly landed on her shoulder — and wouldn't leave! — at a butterfly conservancy when she was only two-and-a-half years old. In preschool and kindergarten, Sophia was thrilled to share what she knew about grasshoppers (her very favourite insects), as well as ants and fireflies… but by first grade, not everyone shared her enthusiasm. Some students bullied her, and Sophia stopped talking about bugs altogether.

When Sophia's mother wrote to an entomological society looking for a bug scientist to be a pen pal for her daughter, she and Sophie were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response — letters, photos, and videos came flooding in.

Using the hashtag BugsR4Girls, scientists tweeted hundreds of times to tell Sophia to keep up her interest in bugs — and it worked! Sophia has since appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and NPR and she continues to share her love of bugs with others. (From Schwartz & Wade)

Sophia Spencer lives in Sarnia, Ont., and is in Grade 4. The Bug Girl is her authorial debut.

Margaret Mcnamara is a New York City-based author of The Mr. Tiffin Classroom series including, The Dinosaur Expert, A Poem in Your Pocket, The Apple Orchard Riddle and How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?. She is also the author of Eliza, The Story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.

Kerascoet is the pen name of French illustrator duo and husband-and-wife team Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset. They work together on book projects and illustrations in Paris. They are the illustrators of the highly acclaimed graphic novel Beautiful Darkness by Fabie Vehlmann, bestselling Jacky Ha-Ha by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein and Malala's Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai.