Maja Kastelic (1981) is an academically trained painter, illustrator and author of picture books for children. After completing her degree in painting at the Art Academy in Ljubljana, she continued her studies with a MSc in Philosophy and Visual Culture Theory (Faculty of Humanities Koper). She worked for a number of years as a restorer of frescos, since 2015 she has worked exclusively as an illustrator. She has received numerous awards and prizes for her work, among others the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava (BIB) Plaque and the IBBY Honours List. She was included in the Illustrators Exhibition selection at the 2015 Bologna Children's Book Fair, and twice in the White Ravens Catalogue by the International Youth Library (A Boy and a House, 2015; First Love, 2016), and her illustrations have been exhibited at numerous curated selections. Her picture book Deček in hiša (A Boy and a House) (Mladinska knjiga, 2015) impressed readers and the professional public both at home and abroad and was also made into a puppet play (LGM Maribor Puppet Theatre, 2017). She works with some of the most notable Slovene and foreign publishing houses and translations of her picture books have been published all around the world. Notable among her illustrations are also the books Pravljično potovanje Hansa Christiana Andersena (The Fairy- tale Journey of Hans Christian Andersen) (Mladinska knjiga, 2021) and Adam in tuba (Adam and His Tuba) (Miš, 2022).