Josje Koppen

Not very long after Josje van Koppen (Delft, the Netherlands, 1961) was born, she started drawing. She hasn't stopped since then. As a child she read all book in the local library and she illustrated them all. Not on the pages of the books, of course, but on all sorts of pieces of paper. At primary school she was annoyed by the dullness of the illustrations in the schoolbooks. Lucky for her at secondary school she had to make schoolbooks all by herself, because the Steiner school didn't use printed ones. It was no surprise Josje later on went to the Art Academy in Rotterdam to become a professional illustrator. At the academy she met her husband with whom she has two splendid sons. Josje has made drawings for magazines, leaflets, etcetera, but lately she's been working mostly for educational publishing companies. Now she can take care that school children don't have to sigh anymore because there learning books are so terribly dull. So the circle is round again. As for the school books, but also for the library books, because recently Josje has started to use her talents to make her own illustrated children's books.