Ileana Surducan is a Romanian artist who works as a freelancer in the fields of illustration, comics, and ceramics. She enjoys telling stories where fantasy mixes into everyday life, and believes that art is a game in which a touch of humor is indispensable—after all, people need the courage to not take themselves too seriously. She has been publishing picture books, graphic novels, and comic anthologies for over ten years in Romania, France, Sweden, and Germany. She enjoys creating stories with multiple levels of meaning that can be enjoyed both by adults and children, thus becoming timeless and universal.

“Surducan’s story is a whimsical and fresh take on the old fairy-tale tropes about working hard and hardly working—and the balance one needs to strike between the two. The art style is both nostalgic and new at the same time. Color changes between Nina’s world and the Other World is like stepping through the looking glass with Alice. There is also a nice mirror of Nina in the Other World that helps readers understand that the opposite of working all the time is not selfishly doing nothing… A short, sweet look at burnout for middle grade readers, with delightful art and a relatable lead character for all to love.