Meet the author

Melissa Castrillón.

Illustrator · United Kingdom

An English-Colombian illustrator with a lush, folkloric style, behind Sophie Anderson's The Snow Girl and a Society of Illustrators gold medallist.

Melissa Castrillón is an English and Colombian illustrator based in Cambridge, where she studied illustration and children's book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. Her decorative, folkloric style, all swirling foliage, patterned skies and rich colour, has illustrated more than a dozen picture books and a run of striking novel covers, including Sophie Anderson's tender winter fairy tale The Snow Girl. Her artwork gives Anderson's gentle story of friendship, bravery and letting go its frozen-forest, storybook atmosphere. Castrillón has won a Gold medal from the Society of Illustrators in New York for her wordless book The Balcony and a UK Literacy Association Award, and her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. A distinctive, highly collectable illustrator whose work suits quietly magical, emotionally resonant stories.