I think the moment that I felt like perhaps writing and illustrating could be a profession for me was when I was in college and I had a teacher who took me aside one day and she said, “Dave, you are a very good writer and I love all the cartoons in your notebooks.” I was supposed to be taking notes, but I was drawing cartoons instead. But she said, you know, “Have you ever thought about writing children’s books?” And I had never thought of that up until that very moment, but that sent me on the course that has led me to here.
My first book was called World War Won. Won was spelled W-O-N so it was not a historical book; it was fiction, but it was the very first children’s book that I had written. And I sent it into a contest. Many years ago there was a national contest for students, and if you won the contest, they would publish your book and so that was my introduction into publishing. At the age of 19 I won the contest for my age category and they published my book.
Having my book published at such an early age was an incredible boost to my self-esteem. And I was very lucky because I got to go and be sort of a traveling author and I got to go all over the state of Ohio where I grew up and speak at schools and talk to children. And so I talked about my experience sitting out in the hallway as a child. And I talked about some of the comic book characters I created when I was a kid.
And I would always mention Captain Underpants, and it always brought the house down. And so at the end of all my speeches all the kids would raise their hand and they’d be like, “Are you ever going to make a book about Captain Underpants?” And so I was like hmm, maybe I should do that.
After that I made a few more picture books and then I started to try to get Captain Underpants published. And I made a dummy for the book and I sent it out. It got lots and lots of rejections, but finally it found a home at Scholastic.
I used to be a paperboy myself and so that was kind of a — sort of a meditation or almost a reflection on being a child and being very independent and having a job at the age of 12 and being on your own and riding your bike through the neighborhood when it’s all quiet. It was a nice vision to explore.
Some of my books are serious. Most of them are funny. But I do have a serious side as well. And I did a lot of serious books, a lot of serious picture books — well, actually three or four — before Captain Underpants came along. But I remember one time I was doing a book signing and some children came up and they were — I was signing a book that I had done called God Bless the Gargoyles.
And the children said oh, we love this book because every time my mommy reads it, she cries. And I was like oh, I felt so bad. I was like oh, maybe I should start focusing on funny books because there are plenty of things in this world that make people cry. Maybe I’ll focus on funny books from now on.
