Sophie Blackall
Sophie Blackall (born 1970) is an Australian illustrator, twice winner of the Caldecott Medal and artist of the Ivy and Bean books.
- Books illustrated
- 9
- Editions tracked
- 9
- First editions
- 8
- Earliest
- 2002
About Sophie Blackall
Sophie Blackall (born 1970) is an Australian illustrator and author, based in the United States, who has won the Caldecott Medal twice and is known for illustrating Annie Barrows's Ivy and Bean series.
Born in Melbourne, she earned a design degree from the University of Technology Sydney in 1992 and moved to Brooklyn in 2000 after winning a US immigration visa lottery. Before turning to picture books she painted robotic characters for theme parks and showed paintings in Sydney and Melbourne galleries. She has illustrated more than 50 children's books, and she and her husband run Milkwood Farm, a retreat for the children's book community in upstate New York.
Shirin Yim Bridges's Ruby's Wish (2002), one of her early books, won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award. She illustrated the Ivy and Bean chapter books by Annie Barrows from 2006, Jacqueline Woodson's Pecan Pie Baby (2010), Meg Rosoff's Wild Boars books and Emily Jenkins's A Fine Dessert (2015). Lindsay Mattick's Finding Winnie (Little, Brown, 2015), the true story of the bear that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh, painted in Chinese ink and watercolour, won her the 2016 Caldecott Medal. Her own Hello Lighthouse (2018) won the medal again in 2019, and she has written If You Come to Earth (2020) and Things to Look Forward To (2022). She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2022 and has worked with UNICEF and Save the Children.
For collectors
Her two Caldecott winners, Finding Winnie (2015) and Hello Lighthouse (2018), are the titles most associated with her, alongside the first Ivy and Bean book (2006).
Illustrated forAnnie Barrows (6)Shirin Yim Bridges (1)Lindsay Mattick (1)Jacqueline Woodson (1)
Books illustrated by Sophie Blackall
Frequently asked questions
Which books did Sophie Blackall illustrate?
We track 9 books illustrated by Sophie Blackall, in 9 editions, the earliest from 2002.
Are books illustrated by Sophie Blackall valuable?
Value depends on the edition and printing, the condition of the book and jacket, and whether a copy is signed. A first edition of a well-known title is worth far more than later printings; each book's page here shows how to identify it.