Querida grew up in Monroe, Wisconsin (USA). She learned to draw from her mother who was an accomplished landscape artist and began selling portraits while still a teenager. She turned to cartooning as a college student and wrote home in comic strip format with "The Adventures of Jacky and Sir" using the family dogs as a substitute for her adventures. While home on break, she created pen and watercolor fashion plates for a local boutique in Monroe, Wisconsin. After college, she became known as "Sally," the pen-named political cartoonist of Two Cents Worth, for the Wisconsin Counties Magazine. Her first picture book was "The Christmas Leprechaun", written as a Christmas present for her father-in-law and his grandchildren. Years later she would study with Caldecott Medal Winner David McLiman, and venture into creating stories and books for her own grandchildren.