Claudia Rueda is an author and a New York Times best-selling illustrator of more than thirty picture books for children, including Meet the Smushkins. Her books have been published in the United States, Mexico, and Spain and have been translated into sixteen languages. A Hans Christian Andersen Award nominee and an Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award nominee, Claudia Rueda is originally from Colombia, where she went to law school and art school and worked as a political cartoonist before studying children's book illustration at UC Berkeley and receiving a master's in creative writing from Lesley University. She lives in New York City.