Beth Anderson is the author of Revolutionary Prudence Wright, Tad Lincoln's Restless Wriggle, and Cloaked in Courage. Her title Lizzie Demands a Seat won the Bank Street Flora Stieglitz Straus Award and the Norman A. Sugarman Children's Biography Honor Award. Sally Wern Comport is the illustrator of numerous picture books and covers, including Blast Off! How Mary Sherman Morgan Fueled America into Space, Ada's Violin, and Nile Crossing. Sally has been working as an artist since she was 15 years old, when she would draw ads for her father's advertising agency. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of American Illustration in New York.
""A detective foils a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. This expertly paced tale ratchets up the tension as readers learn that Lincoln’s life was in danger as he set out by train to Washington, D.C., for his 1861 presidential inauguration. Anderson adeptly plays with dramatic irony: Readers likely already know that he ultimately made it. But how? Enter Kate Warne, 'the first female detective in the United States,' who uncovered a plot to kill Lincoln in Baltimore, his only stop in the South. Organized chronologically, each spread opens like a scrapbook, with pictorial maps of Lincoln’s train route and framed portraits of principal characters and events, all suffused in an ominous, dusky palette. Cleverly, Comport incorporates recurring images of timepieces, matching the sense of suspense layered into Anderson’s text—time is indeed of the essence. A lively, luminous account of a lesser-known woman’s ingenious contribution to presidential history.' —Kirkus Reviews ""The tight focus on the duration of the inaugural train makes for an urgent, almost thriller-like pace... (the) collage art... is stunning (and) inspired...""—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books