Emily Brown Hoffman, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at National Louis University in Chicago. She earned her National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification in Literacy: Reading-Language Arts/Early and Middle Childhood while teaching Kindergarten in Chicago Public Schools. She lives in Logan Square, Chicago with her husband Jason and two children, Scout and Theodore. Colleen E. Whittingham, Ph.D., is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at Loyola University Chicago. She holds a Master's Degree in Literacy, Language, and Culture from UIC, a Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of Dayton, and is a licensed Reading Specialist and Early Childhood Educator (0-8) in the state of Illinois. Dr. Whittingham founded Cardinal Education Group, LLC., a consulting organization that supports early literacy development in racially and linguistically diverse communities. She has three children, Grace, Emmett, and Benjamin, with her husband Kevin, who predicted this textbook multiple lifetimes ago. Hoffman and Whittingham met while pursuing their doctorate degrees in Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The pair sustained parallel graduate assistantships under Dr. Bill Teale, the Director of the UIC Center for Literacy and the Chair of both Hoffman and Whittingham's dissertations. The strong mentorship Teale provided to Hoffman & Whittingham is evident in their continued dedication and commitment to the field of emergent literacy. Since 2013, Hoffman and Whittingham have collaboratively made several contributions to the evolving field of emergent literacy education. The pair has circulated 17 collaborative publications, including articles in literacy-centric journals such as the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Literacy, and the Reading Teacher as well as literacy-focused articles in education journals including Peabody Journal of Education, National Head Start Association Dialog, and Early Childhood Education Journal. The pair has also written book chapters for the edited volumes Multimodal Literacies in Young Emergent Bilinguals: Beyond Print-Centric Practices (Brown & Hao, 2022) and Pivotal Research in Early Literacy (Cassano & Dougherty, 2018). Hoffman and Whittingham also frequently present together, having co-authored 29 joint presentations on emergent literacy teaching and learning, consisting of professional development workshops and regional, state, and [inter]national research conferences. Most recently, their 2023 presentation titled The What and how of emergent writing: Materials, curriculum, and developmentally appropriate instruction for children ages 0-5 drew an audience of 332 early childhood educators. Hoffman and Whittingham have contributed to the advancement of emergent literacy work as invited guests on podcasts, creators of professional development videos, co-authors of white papers, and blog posts.