Robin Preiss Glasser

From website:

Robin Preiss Glasser, the illustrator of the Fancy Nancy series of books by Jane O’Connor, expresses herself with movement. As a professional ballet dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet, she danced dramatic character roles using large, overly dramatic movements, always playing to the back of the house. As an illustrator, Glasser dances through her books acting out the parts. "I see an image and express it through movement."

Although Glasser began dancing professionally at the age of 15, she never gave up her passion for drawing. "The dance season is 32 weeks long," she says. "The other 20 weeks I took art classes." When a back injury cut her dancing career short at the age of 30, Glasser felt old. "I felt like I had lived an entire life already and was all washed up. I didn’t feel like I was able to live another life." With encouragement from her parents, she realized she could continue to express herself visually through drawing and enrolled in the Parsons School of Design in New York. "School opened up a whole new world to me," and she began submitting work to publishers.