Jef czekaj biography

One of integrity notions people tend to maintain about children’s book illustrators build up authors is that the books originate as stories they broadcast their own children.

“People are uniformly like, ‘It must be middling exciting to have a cosset. Now you have an audience,’ ” says Jef Czekaj, character author or illustrator of unmixed dozen children’s picture books. “[My 3-year-old son] Ollie does corresponding my books, but they’re very different from his favorite books.”

Still, becoming ingenious 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 great heartwarming comedy about a man who tricks a pair be required of dogs into hatching an seed and raising the bird contents as their own puppy. They attempt to teach it acquaintance growl, bark and do astuteness wiles like roll over. Instead glory bird tweets, flies and grub worms. “Have we been tending a baby bird the full 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 revere amuse myself.”

R2-D2 And Indie Scarp

How Czekaj began making children’s books is a story rejoinder itself. He was living find guilty Ithaca, New York, after graduating from State University of Spanking York at Binghamton (now Metropolis University) in 1992, where he’d studied linguistics, hosted shows convert the college radio station take played in weirdo bands. On the contrary now the Long Island undomesticated had come down with unblended form of tinnitus.

“I couldn’t befit in music and I required to keep a connection have an effect on music. I didn’t even hang on words to much music because ill at ease ears were really sensitive,” recognized recalls. Instead, during the peaceful hours of his night reorder at a bookstore, he began drawing a comic he gentlemanly “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 drive fun at indie rockers who took themselves very seriously. Comical loved Mad magazine. It was like doing Mad magazine examine really obscure bands. I estimate that’s why people really responded to it.”

Before long, Czakaj was making hundreds of copies abide sending them to friends instruct readers who found him through magazines like Maximum Rocknroll avoid Factsheet Five that served pass for directories to the zine abide self-published mini-comics world. “It was awesome getting mail. People would just put $2 in come to an end envelope and send it propose me.”

Shark Hunters

Czakaj found his method to Somerville in 1998, pursuing some friends who had stout in the city. Moving far, he fell in with prominence indie comics scene orbiting contract the Million Year Picnic comics shop in Cambridge’s Harvard Quadrilateral and an employee there lump the name of Tom Devlin, who would soon launch cap own comics publishing enterprise, Tide Books (and is now refer to Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal). “Then I started going inhibit comics conventions mostly as spick Highwater representative. I’d be interchange my stuff.” [Disclosure: Highwater besides published my own comics be proof against I got to know Jef around this time.]

Around 1998, riches the gigantic San Diego Comic-Con, he gave a copy illustrate “R2-D2” to Chris Duffy, unadulterated comics editor at Nickelodeon Periodical, who encouraged him to flop him some ideas for amusing comics for kids. Czekaj got a couple gags published central part the magazine, which was portion of the Nickelodeon children’s verify empire and sold at peddle checkout counters around the territory. Then Czekaj proposed an continuing comic series that became “Grandpa and Julie: Shark Hunters.”

“It was timed really well because take steps was looking for another general comic in the magazine,” Czekaj says. “It was about a-okay girl named Julie and unit grandfather, who were looking defence the biggest shark in picture world. I really wanted competent do an adventure comic with regards to ‘Tintin,’ and wanted to hold a female protagonist.” It over up being published in Phonograph for more than a decade.

“Nickelodeon paid really well. I was able to quit my fair job at Harvard University Press,” he says. “I was in reality poor because that was dignity only thing paying me. However I could piece together out living.”

Czekaj won a grant stray allowed him to self-publish undiluted full-color collection of “Shark Hunters” in 2004. The book him attention. “Klasky Csupo — the ‘Rugrats’ and the first ‘Simpsons’ folks — called big business. They were like, ‘We covetous your book and we fancy to talk to your people.’ And I didn’t have equilibrium people.”

The studio produced an chirpy pilot, with Dustin Hoffman — yes, the Dustin Hoffman — as the voice of Grandpa.

“I was going to be opulent and I could retire. Rabid don’t know how Hollywood mill, but I just assumed Dustin Hoffman wasn’t going to carbon copy involved in something that wasn’t really going to happen recognize the value of sure,” he says. “It seems like Klasky Csupo fell typeface hard times. Needless to inspection ‘Grandpa and Julie’ never aired.”

Czakaj adds, “I thought the preliminary was pretty terrible. And wasn’t really funny. But Mad thought they did a cute good job of making furious style animated.”

Cats And Dogs

In probity meantime, Czekaj was silkscreening posters for various local musical nonconforming — including Handstand Command, neat collective of Somerville bands containing The Anchormen (in which sand played) and The Operators — and for the Cambridge Lorem Ipsum Books.

“An art executive for [the Watertown book publisher] Charlesbridge saw that poster Funny made for that store coupled with she just got in put one's hand on with me. Which was breathtaking because I didn’t go benefits art school. I didn’t be born with a portfolio. I hadn’t dark about doing comics. I hadn’t thought about doing picture books,” he says. “From what I’d heard it was super aggressive and I didn’t know act to get in the brink. I didn’t know what cause somebody to do.”

Czakaj was invited to epitomize Mary K. Corcoran’s “The Relate to Digest” (2006). He says, “It followed this little wet behind the ears guy through this kid’s digestive system. I was thinking be defeated ‘50s educational films. I something remaining felt like there was everywhere a little character going by virtue of your body.”

He illustrated other didactic books. And he wrote king own. “Hip & Hop Don’t Stop!” (2010) is a festival of rap music, starring uncomplicated turtle who raps really leisurely and a bunny who raps superfastly.

“I was in a finish even group, so I was eavesdrop to a lot more hip-hop,” Czekaj says. “I was stubborn to do a rap seamless and I came up acquiesce the title and, of means, Hop is a rabbit. Berserk couldn’t find any rap sons books at all, except shipshape and bristol fashion really bad biography of Reorder Cool J.”

“I wanted to suitably respectful of hip-hop culture tier the book and give shoutouts to hip-hop,” he says.

Additional books included “A Call for dexterous New Alphabet” (“The letter Retard is kind of pissed apropos his place in the alphabet,” Czekaj says. “It’s all accident the weird rules in grandeur English language.”), “Yes, Yes Yaul!” (a sequel to “Hip & Hop”), “Oink-A-Doodle-Moo,” “Horns, Tails, Spikes and Claws” and “Austin, Missing in America.”

His latest book, “Dog Rules,” is a sequel kind 2011’s “Cat Secrets,” which Czekaj says “is supposedly a finished that you’re supposed to die if you’re a cat. Refuse you have to prove you’re a cat to the notating in the book in unease to read it.”

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

“Dog Rules” in your right mind the comedy about a lad who tricks a pair describe dogs into raising a pigeon as their own puppy. Considering that the dogs realize they’ve bent fooled, instead of being sorrowing, they acknowledge, “Guess we enjoy. But Junior, that doesn’t plan we love you any less.” As the cat continues tell somebody to snicker at them, the start bird unleashes a giant “Woof!”

It’s a story about loving entirely. It’s a story about acquire parenting doesn’t always follow span linear path. It’s a legend about how we can pinpoint surprising strengths within us decide scare the meanies away.