Zizou Corder is Louisa Young and Isabel Adomakoh Young, whose names are too long to fit on the cover of a book. Louisa is an adult and has written five adult books and far too many newspaper and magazine articles; Isabel is a kid and has written mostly schoolwork. The original Zizou is Isabel's Lizard. This is its first novel. They all live in London. Only one goes to school.

Louisa Young was a freelance journalist for many years, writing for national newspapers, motorcycle magazines and women's magazines. She studied history at Trinity College Cambridge, and has of course worked as a street performer, a motorcycle messenger, a cocktail waitress, a singer, and so on. Her first book, A GREAT TASK OF HAPPINESS: THE LIFE OF KATHLEEN SCOTT, was a biography of her grandmother, the sculptress widow of Scott of the Antarctic. She is also the author of a romantic adventure trilogy for adults and THE BOOK OF THE HEART, a cultural history of our most symbolic organ. LION BOY, cowritten with her daughter Isabel, is her first children's novel. She lives in London with her daughter, their lizard Zizou, several spiders and a dead tortoise.