Shadra studied, design, writing, and illustration at Syracuse University and later went on to complete her M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She won the Ezra Jack Keats Award and the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent in 2009 for her work in her first picturebook, Bird, written by Zetta Elliott. Strickland co-illustrated Our Children Can Soar, winner of a 2010 NAACP Image Award. Shadra is also the illustrator of A Place Where Hurricanes Happen (Random House, 2010), written by Renee Watson: a story of four children in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Publishers Weekly called Strickland’s illustrations “quietly powerful,” and Booklist said, “In vibrant, mixed-media images, award-winning illustrator Strickland extends the drama, feeling, and individual stories.”
Shadra travels the country conducting workshops and sharing her work with children, teachers, and librarians.
Born in 1965 in Brittany, France, Alain studied at St. Lukas
in Brussels (comic strip department). Between
1990 and 1994, with Comic creator Eric Lambé, he produced Mokka and Pelure
Amère, two modern comic strip magazines that influenced many authors and
publishers like Fremok. In 1997 he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where he lives
and works as a comics artist, illustrator and storywriter for book publishers, magazines
and newspapers. He has always chosen to live in places for their geographic and
poetic qualities. He has always chosen to live in places for their geographic and poetic qualities. Since 2000, he regularly goes to Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, East-Timor, Angola, Mozambique and São Tomé, where he organizes illustration&writing workshops, with some African and Portuguese NGOs.
