A Tale of Five Balloons

Born in Slovakia, Miryam Rot was a children’s book writer and theorist who wrote about kibbutz life. She immigrated to Palestine in 1931. Rot received the Zeev Award and the UNICEF Smile Award. In 2002, she received the Bialik Prize for Literature.

Ora Ayal was an author, illustrator, mathematician, educator, and translator. Born in Jerusalem, she studied at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts and received a degree in mathematics from Hebrew University. She created games, stories, and activities for teaching children math. She also translated adult and children’s books from Italian into Hebrew. Ayal illustrated more than one hundred books and wrote and illustrated eight books for children. In 1994, she was awarded the Israel Museum Prize for Illustration.