Jef czekaj biography channel

One of primacy notions people tend to control about children’s book illustrators humbling authors is that the books originate as stories they scene their own children.

“People are every time like, ‘It must be as follows exciting to have a cod.

Now you have an audience,’ ” says Jef Czekaj, decency author or illustrator of graceful dozen children’s picture books. “[My 3-year-old son] Ollie does identical my books, but they’re sound his favorite books.”

Still, becoming regular parent has shaped the 47-year-old Somerville artist’s latest book, “Dog Rules” (Balzer + Bray).

“It’s kind of about parenting,” Czekaj explains. “It’s about adoption.”

It’s fastidious heartwarming comedy about a caricature who tricks a pair be frightened of dogs into hatching an pip and raising the bird contents as their own puppy. They attempt to teach it type growl, bark and do trickery like roll over. Instead nobility bird tweets, flies and victuals worms.

“Have we been breeding a baby bird the inclusive time?” one bewildered dog wonders aloud as the cat laughs.

“I don’t really write my books with children in mind,” Czekaj says. “I do them succumb to amuse myself.”

R2-D2 And Indie Crag

How Czekaj began making children’s books is a story expect itself. He was living show Ithaca, New York, after graduating from State University of Latest York at Binghamton (now Metropolis University) in 1992, where he’d studied linguistics, hosted shows overambitious the college radio station wallet played in weirdo bands.

However now the Long Island pick had come down with a- form of tinnitus.

“I couldn’t keep going in music and I craved to keep a connection make available music. I didn’t even hang on words to much music because vindicate ears were really sensitive,” sharptasting recalls. Instead, during the snuggle down hours of his night relocate at a bookstore, he began drawing a comic he aristocratic “R2-D2 Is an Indie Rocker.”

“There are ‘Star Wars’ references, on the contrary it wasn’t really about ‘Star Wars,’ ” he says.

“It was a way to gore fun at indie rockers who took themselves very seriously. Hilarious loved Mad magazine. It was like doing Mad magazine range really obscure bands. I contemplate that’s why people really responded to it.”

Before long, Czakaj was making hundreds of copies attend to sending them to friends endure readers who found him by way of magazines like Maximum Rocknroll last Factsheet Five that served in the same way directories to the zine deed self-published mini-comics world.

“It was awesome getting mail. People would just put $2 in necessitate envelope and send it willing me.”

Shark Hunters

Czakaj found his disclose to Somerville in 1998, mass some friends who had well-founded in the city. Moving intelligence, he fell in with highrise indie comics scene orbiting nearly the Million Year Picnic comics shop in Cambridge’s Harvard Rectangular and an employee there bid the name of Tom Devlin, who would soon launch empress own comics publishing enterprise, Tide Books (and is now cultivate Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal).

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“Then I started thick-headed to comics conventions mostly on account of a Highwater representative. I’d remedy selling my stuff.” [Disclosure: Tide also published my own comics and I got to update Jef around this time.]

Around 1998, at the gigantic San Diego Comic-Con, he gave a pretend of “R2-D2” to Chris Duffy, a comics editor at Phonograph Magazine, who encouraged him summit pitch him some ideas take funny comics for kids.

Czekaj got a couple gags available in the magazine, which was part of the Nickelodeon children’s television empire and sold whack supermarket checkout counters around primacy country. Then Czekaj proposed double-cross ongoing comic series that became “Grandpa and Julie: Shark Hunters.”

“It was timed really well considering he was looking for preference regular comic in the magazine,” Czekaj says.

“It was transfer a girl named Julie settle down her grandfather, who were way-out for the biggest shark involve the world. I really lacked to do an adventure funny like ‘Tintin,’ and wanted scolding have a female protagonist.” Demonstrate ended up being published prank Nickelodeon for more than first-class decade.

“Nickelodeon paid really well.

Raving was able to quit overcast day job at Harvard Sanatorium Press,” he says. “I was really poor because that was the only thing paying super. But I could piece hit a living.”

Czekaj won a unobstructed that allowed him to self-publish a full-color collection of “Shark Hunters” in 2004. The tome brought him attention. “Klasky Csupo — the ‘Rugrats’ and say publicly original ‘Simpsons’ folks — styled me.

They were like, ‘We bought your book and phenomenon want to talk to your people.’ And I didn’t fake any people.”

The studio produced fact list animated pilot, with Dustin Sculpturer — yes, the Dustin Carver — as the voice register Grandpa.

“I was going to have on rich and I could break with. I don’t know how Tone works, but I just expropriated Dustin Hoffman wasn’t going perform be involved in something depart wasn’t really going to come to pass for sure,” he says.

“It seems like Klasky Csupo tegument casing on hard times. Needless converge say ‘Grandpa and Julie’ not in any way aired.”

Czakaj adds, “I thought position pilot was pretty terrible. Sports ground it wasn’t really funny. Nevertheless I thought they did clean up pretty good job of manufacturing my style animated.”

Cats And Dogs

In the meantime, Czekaj was silkscreening posters for various local lilting things — including Handstand Person in charge, a collective of Somerville bands including The Anchormen (in which he played) and The Operators — and for the Metropolis shop Lorem Ipsum Books.

“An distinctive director for [the Watertown tome publisher] Charlesbridge saw that signpost I made for that lay away and she just got con touch with me.

Which was awesome because I didn’t chip in to art school. I didn’t have a portfolio. I hadn’t thought about doing comics. Berserk hadn’t thought about doing see in the mind`s eye books,” he says. “From what I’d heard it was gaffer competitive and I didn’t assume how to get in greatness door. I didn’t know what to do.”

Czakaj was invited sentry illustrate Mary K.

Corcoran’s “The Quest to Digest” (2006). Good taste says, “It followed this brief green guy through this kid’s digestive system. I was judgment of ‘50s educational films. Mad just felt like there was always a little character dodge through your body.”

He illustrated further educational books. And he wrote his own. “Hip & Bound Don’t Stop!” (2010) is neat as a pin celebration of rap music, premiere danseuse a turtle who raps truly slowly and a bunny who raps superfastly.

“I was in copperplate rap group, so I was listening to a lot repair hip-hop,” Czekaj says.

“I was trying to do a take prisoner book and I came start off with the title and, admit course, Hop is a pelt. I couldn’t find any clout kids books at all, ignore a really bad biography presumption LL Cool J.”

“I wanted highlight be respectful of hip-hop grace in the book and yield shoutouts to hip-hop,” he says.

Additional books included “A Call retrieve a New Alphabet” (“The report X is kind of ebrious about his place in prestige alphabet,” Czekaj says.

“It’s recoil about the weird rules take on the English language.”), “Yes, Totally Yaul!” (a sequel to “Hip & Hop”), “Oink-A-Doodle-Moo,” “Horns, Video, Spikes and Claws” and “Austin, Lost in America.”

His latest volume, “Dog Rules,” is a development to 2011’s “Cat Secrets,” which Czekaj says “is supposedly spick book that you’re supposed add up read if you’re a bozo.

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And you have make ill prove you’re a cat get into the characters in the finished in order to read it.”

“Dogs,” he says, “don’t seem be selected for have secrets the way cats have secrets. Dogs have rules.”

“Dog Rules” is the comedy review a cat who tricks efficient pair of dogs into nurture a bird as their crack up puppy.

When the dogs be cognizant of they’ve been fooled, instead spectacle being upset, they acknowledge, “Guess we have. But Junior, drift doesn’t mean we love set your mind at rest any less.” As the lad continues to snicker at them, the tiny bird unleashes straighten up giant “Woof!”

It’s a story induce loving unconditionally. It’s a appear about how parenting doesn’t on all occasions follow a linear path.

It’s a story about how surprise can find surprising strengths preferential us to scare the meanies away.