Margaret Warner Morley was an American educator, biologist, and author of many children's books on nature and biology. She grew up in Brooklyn and studied at State University of New York at Oswego and Hunter College. She continued her biology education at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago and at the Woods Hole marine laboratory in Massachusetts. Morley worked as a teacher and was considered an expert in agriculture and beekeeping.
In one of her many trips she went to Europe to the Val Gardena the valley of toy carvers where she was inspired to write the novel Donkey John of the toy valley.
(source: wikipedia)