Children’s books deserve great art. That is why we incorporate paintings, sculptures, installation art and other art forms in our books. We work with talented artists, illustrators, photographers and graphic designers who become a vital part of the collaboration and publishing process. Get to know them here!
Alexis Kandra
Alexis lives and works in New York City. Born in Pittsburgh PA, she grew up with a passion for making art and the natural world. As a child, she took art classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History, which fostered her love of dioramas, biodiversity, and searching for our place in the universe. She received her BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Alexis’ paintings took on a new dimension as she began combining surreal animal arrangements with a layer of abstract grids. The animals exist inside spheres of life. They intersect and move like the atoms of a molecule or the orbits of planets. The colors of the plants and animals invert as they reach out of their spheres, which emphasizes that they are reaching into a new and possibly unknown space. In these paintings, the underlying structure of the universe may not be as it first seems on the surface.
Patrik Antczak
Patrik is an illustrator, a graphic designer and a creative freelancer who lives and works in Prague. His heart beats for paper, but he works with digital technologies as well. His work is characterized by humor and playfulness. In the "Left and Right" book, Patrik literally draws with scissors and arranges the cuts into paper sculptures. Individual cut elements support each other as they do in architecture. One simple bend or join is able to carry the weight of the whole object.
Sarah Bianco
Born and raised in the midwest, Sarah moved to California and graduated from UCSC, obtaining a BFA with an emphasis in drawing and painting. She lives and works at the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Her paintings have evolved over time from purely abstract, dreamlike landscapes to incorporating the figure in motion within these scenes. She is attempting to create a dialogue between the internal and external worlds with color, form and movement. Subjects in her earlier “Jump” series have been children jumping, representing the fearlessness of youth, honoring play, mystery, freedom, and taking chances.
Amina Akhmadeeva
Amina Amina is an illustrator from NYC and a 2020 graduate of the School of Visual Arts. With her passion for art, she aims to bring life to characters and narratives. She is inspired by plants and nature as a whole, and tries to inject it into her life and her art as much as she can. Her strengths lie in traditional art, portraiture, narrative illustration, and spoiling her cat.
Karolina Kubik
Daughter of Bogumiła, sister of Katarzyna, granddaughter of Irena and Czesława. Kubik is a visual performance poet who makes use of repetition, laughter and pro-peace activism, which supplies models for new behaviors. Above all, she believes that abstract is revolutionary and that we must nurture the abstract rather than make a liberation theology of reason. Karolina is a graduate and Ph.D. candidate in the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland and the recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Grant. She graduated from Pratt Institute (New York City) with a Master of Fine Arts in Performance and Performance Studies. Karolina Kubik is also the recipient of the three-year-long scholarship for young researchers awarded by the Polish Ministry of Science.
Rachael Smith
Rachael C. Smith teaches at a Waldorf Inspired School in Fallbrook, California. She has lived in many locations across the world, including Edinburgh, London, Singapore and Hong Kong, and loves to go on summerlong trips to far off destinations. She finds inspiration in travel and nature, and feels equally at home in a backyard garden or bustling city. Her joy for storytelling, handiwork and teaching animates her personal as well as her work as a teacher and artist.
Matej Lacko
Matej Lacko is a graphic designer who specializes in a number of disciplines ranging from art direction, graphic design, digital media and printing to creating original visual identity for his clients. With interest in typography, photography and advertising, Matej views design as a creative, collaborative process where he can combine creativity with emotion and express anything. Reflection, research, drawing, focus on minimalism, experimenting, sharing and having fun are essential to Matej’s work ethic. He works freelance for an advertising agency and is actively involved in several independent projects in contemporary culture, music, fashion design and print publishing. He enjoys being part of creative collaborations and working on interesting projects while staying curious, honest and hardworking.
Megan Hart
Megan Hart is a graphic designer currently based in Melbourne, Australia. She is originally from Texas, where she got a degree in Advertising before moving to New York to study graphic design. She has a passion for clean, conceptual design, but a soft spot for playfulness, which can often be seen in her work.
Martina Rozinajova
Martina is an award winning illustrator, graphic and book designer. She graduated from Department of Visual Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia. Throughout her career, Martina was awarded three 'Slovak National Design' awards for both individual and group design projects, one of them focused on art education textbooks for primary school pupils. In the past, she worked on various books and many of them have won 'IBBY' - an award that stands for 'The Most Beautiful Children's Book of Slovakia'.
Emilee Muthu
Emilee is an elementary school student whose art appears in "Toddler of Arts: Year 2". She is an early artist, collaborator and studies drawing and printmaking at CSSMA. She lives in NYC with her EmmEmm family.