Meet the author

Mika Song.

Writer & illustrator · United States

Mika Song: author-illustrator of the Norma and Belly squirrel capers, whose loose watercolour comics make gentle, laugh-out-loud first graphic novels — light on reading load, big on heart, and just right for newly independent readers aged 5–9.

Mika Song is an author-illustrator who grew up in Manila and Honolulu before moving to New York to study animation at Pratt Institute and work in children's educational animation. She writes and draws her own books in a loose, expressive ink-and-watercolour style perfectly suited to early graphic novels. Her Norma and Belly series — Donut Feed the Squirrels, Apple of My Pie, Pizza My Heart and One Smart Cookie — follows two scrappy city squirrels whose food-obsessed heists always go gloriously, cartoonishly wrong, with friendship the real reward; the first book won a 2021 Eisner Honor for early readers. Her tender graphic novel Night Chef, about a lonely raccoon who secretly cooks in a French restaurant, brings a Studio Ghibli warmth to themes of loneliness and belonging. An ideal first comic for newly independent readers aged 5–9, light on reading load and big on heart.