Jim Melko

Jim Melko is an English teacher with the Dayton Public Schools system in Ohio for high school students at risk for dropping out. He is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

He came up with the idea for How Christmas Got Its Colors while looking at a traffic light during the Christmas season. Jim is a professional songwriter and his initial idea was to try to write it as a Christmas song like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." The original draft of the book was actually a "story map" for the song. After writing that, he realized it worked better as a children's book.