Born on March 3rd and raised in Glencoe Illinois, Suse MacDonald graduated from the University of Iowa, where she studied fine arts. She was more interested in commercial art, but it was looked down upon at her college. She married after graduation and she and her husband moved to New York City. There, she illustrated science books, a career she enjoyed. When the couple moved to the family farm in Vermont, they began a construction company and Ms. MacDonald took up architectural drafting. After ten years of raising their two children, she attended the New England School of Art and Design and the Art Institute in Boston. There, she discovered children's book illustration. Ms. McDonald writes, "A typography course was the catalyst for my first book. My assignment was to turn a letter of the alphabet into a representation of something. I turned an A into an owl. Afterwards I thought, if I can turn an A into an owl, why not turn A into something that begins with A. This idea led to my first book, Alphabatics, which won a Caldecott Honor presented by the American Library Association..."
