Mary GrandPré

GrandPré's illustrations for The Noisy Paint Box were recognized by the 2015 Caldecott Medal committee. She was given a Caldecott Honor for her work in this picture book biography of Wassily Kandinsky, evoking his synesthesia. GrandPré's work with the Harry Potter books has been featured on the cover of Time magazine. Her work, chosen from thousands of illustrators, has also been featured on the cover of Showcase 16. She has received awards from The Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, Graphis, Print, and Art Direction, and has been profiled in Step-by-Step Graphics and Communications Arts Magazine. GrandPré has also been featured in the book How Jane Won, which examines fifty women who have been successful in their chosen career and in their personal lives.

In a June 2007 St. Paul Pioneer Press article, GrandPré revealed that six months prior, she and her husband went to China, where they adopted a little girl.

In 2006, GrandPré began creating art for herself instead of for an assignment. She has donated several pieces to The Wellness Community of Southwest Florida, a non-profit organization providing support for people with cancer. She has also contributed to her local Habitat for Humanity charity by donating pieces and books, as well.

Mary GrandPré has created images for advertising and magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal. Among her other famous works, she was commissioned to illustrate the official poster for the 2005 Minnesota State Fair. A DreamWorks executive who enjoyed her work called to invite her to participate as an illustrator for their movie Antz, for which GrandPré was involved with creating some of the landscapes. She has also participated in character development for another animated film. She has taught at The Ringling School of Art and Design.

According to a November 2003 article in Sarasota magazine, Grandpré had recently moved to Sarasota, Florida with her husband, Tom Casmer, who had recently taken a position as head of the illustration department at the Ringling School of Art and Design.

She was a Fine Arts major at Pomona College and was in her mid-twenties before she considered art school, having supposed illustration to be "a boring, commercial thing". She graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1981.

Mary GrandPré (born February 13, 1954) is an American illustrator best known for her cover and chapter illustrations of the Harry Potter books in their U.S. editions published by Scholastic. She received a Caldecott Honor in 2015 for illustrating Barb Rosenstock's The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art. GrandPré, who creates her artwork with paint and pastels, has illustrated more than twenty books and has appeared in gallery exhibitions and periodicals such as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and The Wall Street Journal.

Mary GrandPré was born February 13, 1954 in South Dakota. She began drawing when she was five years old, beginning with a reproduction of Walt Disney's cartoon character "Mickey Mouse". By age ten, she was imitating Salvador Dalí, experimenting with stretched objects painted with oils, before graduating to copying black-and-white photos from the encyclopedia. She was influenced by the stained glass windows of the church where she attended Mass daily, saying, "There was a kind of luminous quality about them, a glow, that sometimes comes out in my artwork, whether I mean it to or not."