Amanda (Moeckel) Calatzis has an MFA from the Illustration As Visual Essay program at School of Visual Arts. She is the author-illustrator of forthcoming picture book At the Bottom of Blue (Rocky Pond, 2027), and illustrator of forthcoming picture book Shaped By Love: An Ode to Mom Bods (by Nikki Powers, Candlewick, December 2025).

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Other books include: 

Just One Girl: A Fight for Equal Rights

(by Trinka Hakes Noble, Sleeping Bear, 2024)

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Are You My Cutie Patootie? 

(by Monique Aiken, Schiffer Kids, 2024)

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Mister Rogers' Gift of Music

(by Donna Cangelosi, Page Street Kids, 2022).

 

Khalida and the Most Beautiful Song

(Page Street Kids, 2018). 

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Amanda's first word was “light.” She spent much of her childhood drawing people in any notebook she could find. She and her neighborhood girlfriends ran feral in the woods, and presided over a lake crowned on one shore by an old theme park. Screams from the wooden rollercoaster were the herald of summer.
 

She brings light-filled, untamed magic into her books, with paint, collage and embroidery. She illustrates her own stories, but welcomes others' as well, especially if they are soulful and empathetic. She's drawn to magical realism, nature adventures, diverse casts of characters and difficult subjects. 

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“In the mud and scum of things, there always, always something sings.” 

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- Ralph Waldo Emerson

(her distant cousin)

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Her work has been featured by the Norman Rockwell Museum, in the Society of Illustrators’ Original Art Show, The Children’s Book Podcast, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and other popular kidlit blogs.

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Now, after years in various cities, she lives near a stretch of the Appalachian Trail in the Hudson Valley. She spends her days with her husband (who also works from home), two spirited children, two rescue dogs and more charismatic wild animals than she can count.

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She is represented by Charlotte Wenger of Prospect Agency.

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For her pet portraits, see MyAnimalArt.com.

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