Karen Leggett Abouraya graduated from Brown University with a degree in international relations. She worked as a broadcast journalist for many years on ABC Radio WMAL in Washington, D.C., where she began reviewing and discussing children’s books and met her Egyptian husband. She has also reviewed children’s books and interviewed authors, and now writes for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Refuge System), Voice of America, International Educator magazine (NAFSA), and others.