Suzy Lee

Wave, illustrated by Lee, won the New York Times’s Best Illustrated Book Award in 2008, and the Golden Medal from the Society of Illustrators.

2014, Best Books of the Year for Children and YA., Bank Street College of Education Book Committee, for Open This Little Book

2013, Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature (Picture Book Honor Winner), U.S.A., for Open This Little Book

2010, Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2010 by The New York Times, U.S.A., for Shadow

2010, Prêmio FNLIJ Luis Jardim - O Melhor Livro de Imagem by FNLIJ (Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil), Brazil, for Shadow

2008, Premio Albumilustrado by Gremio de Librerios de Madrid (Asociación de Empresarios del Comercio del Libro de Madrid), Spain, for Wave

2008, Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2008 by The New York Times, U.S.A., for Wave

2008, Gold Medal for Original Art by the Society of Illustrators, U.S.A., for Wave

2008, Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts by the National Council of Teachers of English, U.S.A., for The Zoo

Suzy Lee's books often explore the tension and pleasure between reality and fantasy. She uses a variety of methods for her illustration. Her first book, an illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland, combines monocromatic drawing, photography, and sampled art to create the surreal scenes of the text. When Lee works along on books, they usually do not include text. Suzy Lee's Border trilogy (Mirror (2003), Wave (2008), and Shadow (2010)) work turn to the space of the page -- having her characters move across the open spread from one page to the next, using the gutters for visual and emotional effect -- to explore solitude and the possibility of imagination. Wave, where a little girl moves from being on the sand into the sea playing with the waves, offers both a study in using the location of color from compartmentalized and tight to scattered and mixed across the page, as well as a study in what Ana Margarida and Rui Ramos call ecoliteracy, how people come to read the natural world. Wave has also been used in therapies using virtual reality storytelling for children with Intellectual Developmental Disability (IDD). For Shadow, she again relied on placement of the page to center the story around. To make the shadows that the little girl plays with, she used spray-paint for a soft but sharp image, like a shadow. She also held an exhibit where she provided a shadow puppet stage for audiences to enact and reenact aspects of the book. Open this Little Book also plays with the form of the book, using different sizes of paper to create a space for play and discovery.

2003, The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2003 by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Switzerland, for La revanche des lapins

She graduated in 1996 with a BFA in Painting from the Seoul National University, and earned an MA in Book Arts in 2001 from Camberwell College of Arts.

Suzy Lee (born January 1, 1974) is a children's book illustrator and author. She designed the poster for the 2013 US National Book Festival.