Gerda Muller was born in Naarden in the Netherlands in 1926. She attended the Amsterdam School of Fine Arts and Crafts, where the students were told, however, that outside of advertising there was no way to earn a living with illustrations. So at the end of the 1940s, she set off for Paris with a suitcase and her bicycle to study with the French poster artist Paul Colin. But here, too, the focus was always on advertising. But as her desire to illustrate books for children grew, she left Colin’s studio after a year. She decided not to return to her homeland and stayed in France. The opportunity to make books for children soon presented itself: in 1951, Gerda Muller began publishing picture books with the Père Castor publishing house in Paris and subsequently worked with a number of publishers in France. She has illustrated over 120 books for children and her books have been translated into many languages.