MISA SABURI
Misa Saburi | MEE-sah Sah-BUR-ree | was born in Sleepy Hollow, NY but at the age of seven, her family moved to Tokyo, where she was then raised. At the time she was not pleased by this turn of events and “cried until she thought her eyeballs would melt to make tears”. She recovered this great indignity intact and in fact, inspired, by manga as a teen, and by great artists: Shinta Chō, Chihiro Iwasaki, and Mizumaru Anzai as her interest in art grew. Misa came back to the US for college, where she earned her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston. After graduation she was invited to do a three-month residency at an artists’ studio in Lyon, France where the illustrators were making books. Upon returning to the US she took classes in children’s illustration, worked on her children’s art portfolio, joined SCBWI, and then, made a big move to New York to pursue her own career in children’s publishing.
Misa creates her art both on paper, with ink and watercolor, and on screen, in Photoshop, often she’s simultaneously watching soccer games or listening to Japanese radio shows. She is the illustrator of a number of beautiful and funny children’s books including Cats are a Liquid, by Rebecca Donnelly, which received a starred review from BCCB, and Natsumi’s Song of Summer by Robert Paul Weston, which received a starred review from Kirkus. See all of her titles, below.
