She released her first graphic novel, Anya's Ghost in 2011, and has since released several other graphic novels, children's books, and contributed to other books as an illustrator and writer. She also worked at Laika doing storyboards (including the animated films Coraline, Paranorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings) before she left the company, and was Head of Story for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio.
Her website is here at verabee
. Also has an instagram.
Bibliography:
- Anya's Ghost: A lonely Russian girl makes best friends with a ghost and gets more than she planned for. Won an Eisner Award.
- Be Prepared: A semi-autobiographical story of a young Vera spending a rough summer at a Russian summer camp.
- Leave Me Alone!: A grandmother, trying to get her knitting done, searches for peace and quiet. A Caldecott Medal Honor book.
- The Little Guys: A children's book about strength in numbers and community.
- Memory Jars: A children's book with the main character trying to preserve everything in jars so as to keep it forever.
- Plain Jane and the Mermaid, Releasing in May 2024, about a plain-looking girl who ends up venturing under the sea to rescue her fiance prince who's been kidnapped by a mermaid.
- What, Were You Raised By Wolves?: A miniature comic—fully available on her site—about a girl who is Raised by Wolves and struggles to adapt to the human world and its cruelties. Has a Downer Ending.
Tropes about her writing and works include:
- Downer Ending: What, Were You Raised By Wolves? ends with the girl in question leaving the human world, finding the bones of the young boy that was eaten when she was a child, and then disappearing into the forest. The website states that it's "not a very happy story."
- Write What You Know: Anya's Ghost and Be Prepared both have heavy Russian elements and focus on Russian immigrant girls—both Anya and Vera are a Russian immigrants. Be Prepared is directly based on Vera's time at Russian culture summer camp.
- Raised by Wolves: The titular girl in What, Were You Raised By Wolves? is exactly this. Because of it she fails to adapt to the human world and at the end, returns back to the woods.
