Meet the author

Beatrice Alemagna.

Writer & illustrator · France · b. 1973

Beatrice Alemagna: Italian-born, Paris-based picture-book author-illustrator — painterly, emotionally precise, slightly melancholy books (On a Magical Do-Nothing Day, A Lion in Paris) for families who value art and quietness.

Beatrice Alemagna is an Italian author-illustrator born in 1973 in Bologna, who lives and works in Paris and creates picture books that are visually distinctive, emotionally precise and often a little melancholy. Best known for The Big Wave / La Grande Onda, The Little Gardener, On a Magical Do-Nothing Day, A Lion in Paris, and What Is a Child? Her style is painterly and textured, with a strong continental-European art sensibility, closer to Eric Carle or Wolf Erlbruch than to contemporary cartoon picture books, and her stories tend to slow down and pay attention to what children actually feel. Multiple Bologna Ragazzi Award winner. A giftable, gallery-shelf picture-book author for families who value art and quietness over bounce.