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. In 2016 he was a Maurice Sendak Fellow, a residency program for illustrators.^[1]

Cooper is the author of the memoirs Falling: A Daughter, a Father, and a Journey Back, ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: A Year in an American High School, and Crawling: A Father's First Year, and several sketchbooks.

Children's books include 8: An Animal Alphabet, Train, Farm, Homer, Beaver Is Lost, Ice Cream, Ballpark, Building, Dance!, Magic Thinks Big, 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."^[2] His book Big Cat, Little Cat was a Caldecott Honor book in 2018.^[3] River won the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize in 2020.

He currently lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.