Madalena was born in Lisbon, in 1974. She is an illustrator. She graduated in Communication Design at the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Fine Arts and later specialised in graphic design at the University of Barcelona.
In 1999, Madalena founded Planeta Tangerina together with three friends. Planeta Tangerina started out as a content, illustration and graphic design studio, and later in 2004 debuted as a publisher. From the beginning, their books have always wanted to explore new territories, question and challenge readers and be free.
Madalena has illustrated several books, such as When I was Born, With Time, Clap Book, Little Andersen’s Dictionary, Where Do We Go When We Disappear? and Inside – A Guide to Exploring The Brain.
She has won the Portuguese National Illustration Awards twice (2008 and 2018) and received several honourable mentions (2006, 2007, 2009 and 2014); and also the Children’s Illustration prize at the comics festival Amadora BD (2008 and 2011). In 2018, the illustrations from her book It’s Not That Hard were selected for the illustration exhibition at the Bologna Children’s Books Fair. The same book also received an honourable mention in the category “Children’s Picture Books” at the New York Book Fair. Her book Mountains has received an honourable mention from the jury in the category of Art, Architecture and Design (Bologna Ragazzi Awards, 2018). The book What’s It For? received an honourable mention from the jury in the category of Non Fiction (Bologna Ragazzi Awards, 2022).
