Elisha Cooper is an American writer and children's book author. Cooper went to Foote School and Hopkins School in Connecticut. After graduating from Yale, he worked for The New Yorker as a messenger.
Cooper is the author of the memoir Crawling: A Father's First Year, and the sketchbook A Year in New York. ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: A Year in an American High School is a non-fiction book about eight students at Walter Payton High School in Chicago.
Children’s books include Ice Cream, Ballpark, Building, Country Fair, Dance!, Magic Thinks Big, Bear Dreams, A Good Night Walk, and Beach.
Dance! was a New York Times Ten Best Illustrated winner in 2001. Beach was a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal best illustrated book of the year in 2006.
A New York Times Book Review said of Magic Thinks Big, "Elisha Cooper's watercolors, like his sentences, are simple and quiet and essentially perfect."
He currently lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.