Peter Sís

Peter Sís (born Petr Sís in Brno, 1949) is a Czech-born American illustrator and writer of children's books. His work, which combines illustration with narrative and historical research, earned him the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2012, one of the field's highest honours, for his lasting contribution as an illustrator of children's literature.

He was born in Brno, in what was then Czechoslovakia, into a family of artists: his father was a filmmaker and his mother a painter. He studied at the High School of Applied Arts and the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague, and later at the Royal College of Art in London, where he worked with Quentin Blake. He began his career in animated film, and in 1980 won a Golden Bear at the West Berlin Film Festival for the short Hlavy.

In 1982 he travelled to the United States to make an animated film about Czechoslovakia's participation in the Los Angeles Olympics. When the Soviet Union led a boycott that included Czechoslovakia, he did not return home. He was granted asylum, and became a U.S. citizen in 1988. There he began illustrating and writing books, and also worked as an editorial illustrator for magazines such as Time and Newsweek.

His nonfiction books, such as Starry Messenger about Galileo, Tibet Through the Red Box and The Wall, about growing up behind the Iron Curtain, have received Caldecott Honors and Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. His work has shaped how text and image can work together in children's nonfiction.