Profile
Susan Simon’s illustrations feature expressive children, humor, sweetness, and imaginative whimsy. She has illustrated seventeen children’s books. Her clients include Behrman House, Kar Ben, McGraw Hill, Scott Foresman, Dutton, Publications International, Harcourt, Oxford University Press, Scholastic, Bill Smith Studios, Random House, Simon and Schuster, Houghton Mifflin, McClanahan, Frank Schaffer Publications, Sadlier, MacMillan, WIC and Cornell University among others. Susan lives in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona, with the saguaro cactuses, the coyotes, the Catalina mountains, and her husband, D.B., a music theory professor at the University of Arizona. As a very young child, Susan both learned from and fell in love with the goodness and beauty readable in some children’s book illustrations. Without having words for it, she understood very young the power of a picture to inform deeply. When she’s not trying to give her all to share with children that kind of quality in her own work, she enjoys walking her two beloved rescued mutts – Oatcake and Peach – riding her giant green bicycle, and playing her growly old accordion. She is a member of the Graphic Artists Guild, (she has served as both National Representative and also Treasurer for the At Large Chapter as well as on the National Executive Committee as Chair of the Public Affairs Committee). She is currently active in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator, and past Co-Illustration Representative for Arizona.