Nooshin Safakhoo

My best childhood playmate was my father. Sometimes we were a lion and his cub, other times a large ship that harbored a little boat inside it. Yet, the best time we spent together was when he told me stories and I simultaneously drew them. Stories he had made up of real-life characters, but with strange names and behaviors, who went about common daily routines in uncommon ways. To me, he is still the greatest storyteller and I wish to tell stories to children by drawing them as sweetly as he narrated them. —Nooshin Safakhoo

Beloved Iranian illustrator Nooshin Safakhoo was born in Tehran in 1980. After teaching, she began a long career of painting precise, lyrical images for children’s books, including The Owl & the Jaybird and Shahname. In the Meadow of Fantasies has earned her numerous awards, including a NAMI Concours Prize. Nooshin has been selected three times to show her work at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.