Claudia Rueda: Illustrator – Colombia

To write and illustrate for children is a challenge that makes us better as human beings.

Rueda C.

curiosity and playfulness—this is how Claudia Rueda, a Colombian illustrator and picture-book author, defines childhood. No wonder critics claim that these features dominate in her works for children. Before Rueda turned to books for young readers, she was known as an author of political cartoons, published in Colombian press in the period of drug and guerilla wars. In order to obtain a Master’s degree from a law school, which she attended concurrently with an art school at National University of Colombia, she submitted an illustrated thesis titled Graphic History of the Roman Law. When studying computer graphics at the University of California, Berkeley, she attended a children’s books illustration course and ever since has found fulfilment as an artist creating for young readers.

Claudia Rueda has authored over twenty children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction—for example, No, a compendium about black bears. In her artistic work, she uses a variety of techniques, such as charcoal and ink drawing or computer graphics, but her favorite is colored pencil drawing. Rueda is particularly interested in the interpretative tension between illustration and text, which she often uses to add another dimension to the narrative. In her picture book Anaconda, a tale about a mouse which questions the existence of the snake in the title, the text tells a different story from that shown in the illustrations. Another characteristic feature of Rueda’s creative output is open endings, inspired by Eastern philosophy.

Claudia Rueda has been awarded many prizes, among them the Bank Street College Best Children’s Books for Here Comes the Easter Cat and Here Comes Santa Cat (2015), the Nati per Leggere Award for the Italian edition of No (2012), and the Oppenheim Platinum Award for My Little Polar Bear (2009). In 2008, Let’s Play in the Frest While the Wolf is Not Around was nominated for the IBBY Honour List. Rueda’s books have been translated into more than ten languages including English, French, Chinese, Japanese, German, and Danish.