Yeah, so I grew up you know loving to draw and make pictures and you know, studied art all through high school and went to special art programs in the summer and then I ended up you know wanting to keep doing, trying to figure out a way to make a career out of art so I went to college for you know, I was trying to be sensible about it so I went to college for graphic design.
And so I studied graphic design and then I still continued to take classes in drawing and painting and print making so fine art classes. But my goal was to, after I got out of college was to work as a graphic designer and once I got out of school and was working as a designer for a few years, I didn’t like being a designer.
I liked the creative aspect of it but I didn’t really love the very business, very hard working sort of working for like a big company, I didn’t love that part of it. So at that same time I had met my wife, she’s my wife now, at the time she was my girlfriend, and she was an elementary school librarian and she said, and she writes too, she’s an author, and she said you know I can, why don’t you try to do a children’s book.
You know, she said I could write it and then she gave it, she would hand me the story and I’d try to do some pictures and get it published. And I thought that was a terrible idea and I didn’t really want to do it. But she started bringing me home children’s books and I had forgotten about the world of children’s books, so the ones she brought me home just really changed my mind.
She would bring me home you know classic children’s books, but also current you know contemporary picture books that had really inspiring, really just amazing illustrations. And so I, I at that point I really, it changed my mind about not wanting to do it, I really wanted to try it.
And we submitted, we ended up, you know she wrote the story and I did some, a few pictures for the story and we submitted it and we got mostly rejected but in the end it got like one sort of maybe letter and it ended up getting published so, and that was in 2004 is when that book came out, Toby and the Snowflakes it was called.