Paola Escobar author page

Paola Escobar biography

Paola Escobar is a Colombian graphic designer and illustrator whose work includes children’s picture books, illustrated fiction and educational publishing. She has worked with publishers including Oxford University Press, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Hachette and Bloomsbury, alongside producing illustrations for print and digital magazines. As a child, she drew pictures inspired by stories her grandmother told about their family and Colombian culture.

Escobar illustrated Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré, written by Anika Aldamuy Denise and published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019. The picture book tells the story of Pura Belpré, the first Puerto Rican librarian at the New York Public Library. It received a 2020 Pura Belpré Author Honor from the American Library Association. Her other illustrated picture books include Digging for Words by Angela Burke Kunkel, Queen of Tejano Music: Selena by Silvia López and A Plate of Hope by Erin Frankel. The latter, a biography of chef José Andrés and his humanitarian work, won the 2025 Texas Bluebonnet Award.

Her illustrations also appear in children’s fiction published in the UK. She illustrated books in Anna James’s Pages & Co. series, beginning with Tilly and the Bookwanderers, published by HarperCollins in 2018. She also provided the black-and-white illustrations for The Hatmakers by Tamzin Merchant, published by Puffin. In 2024, she illustrated The Perfect Place, a picture book written by Matt de la Peña and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers.

Escobar illustrated Professor Dumbledore for Bloomsbury Children’s Books’ Pocket Potters series, a collection of illustrated guides to characters from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories. The 32-page hardback was published on 24 February 2026.