About the Authors
Jon Scieszka is best known for his bestselling picture books, including The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! and The Stinky Cheese Man. He is also the founder of guysread.com and a champion force behind guyslisten.com, and was the first National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
About the Narrators
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.
Ramón de Ocampo, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, was a cowinner in 2018 of the Audie Award for Best Multi-Voiced Performance. A graduate of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, he has been seen on television, film, and stages all over the world, including recurring roles on such television shows as The West Wing, 12 Monkeys, Sons of Anarchy, and Medium. He is the winner of a prestigious Obie Award for his stage work.
Steve West, the winner of multiple Earphones Awards for narration, is an international actor who has starred on London’s prestigious West End stage, including productions of Mamma Mia! and Oh, What a Night! He is widely known for his television and film work in both the United States and the UK, and he has performed for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. He hosts his own television show for the UK live from Los Angeles.
Hakeem Kae-Kazim is a British-Nigerian actor who classically trained at the highly regarded Bristol Old Vic and soon after graduation was invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. His list of impressive credits includes Pirates of the Caribbean III, Lost, Law & Order: SVU, X-Men: Wolverine, The 4th Kind, and Darfur. Hakeem is best known for his portrayal of Georges Rutaganda in Hotel Rwanda and as Colonel Dubaku in the hit television series 24. His distinctive voice has also been shared in many popular video games including Halo, Call of Duty, and The Bourne Conspiracy.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.