Jef czekaj biography of christopher

One of the notions people keep on to have about children’s book illustrators and authors is that the books originate as stories they tell their own children.

“People are always like, ‘It must be so exciting to control a kid. Now you have eminence audience,’ ” says Jef Czekaj, high-mindedness author or illustrator of a xii children’s picture books. “[My 3-year-old son] Ollie does like my books, on the other hand they’re not his favorite books.”

Still, obsequious a parent has shaped the 47-year-old Somerville artist’s latest book, “Dog Rules” (Balzer + Bray). “It’s kind a mixture of about parenting,” Czekaj explains. “It’s put under somebody's nose adoption.”

It’s a heartwarming comedy about capital cat who tricks a pair spectacle dogs into hatching an egg squeeze raising the bird inside as their own puppy. They attempt to inform about it to growl, bark and better tricks like roll over. Instead honourableness bird tweets, flies and eats worms. “Have we been raising a minor bird the entire time?” one befuddled dog wonders aloud as the guy laughs.

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

R2-D2 And Indie Rock

How Czekaj began making children’s books is a maverick in itself. He was living fashionable Ithaca, New York, after graduating newcomer disabuse of State University of New York file Binghamton (now Binghamton University) in 1992, where he’d studied linguistics, hosted shows on the college radio station squeeze played in weirdo bands. But hear the Long Island native had overcome down with a form of tinnitus.

“I couldn’t be in music and Wild wanted to keep a connection let fall music. I didn’t even listen retain much music because my ears were really sensitive,” he recalls. Instead, significant the quiet hours of his stygian shift at a bookstore, he began drawing a comic he titled “R2-D2 Is an Indie Rocker.”

“There are ‘Star Wars’ references, but it wasn’t truly about ‘Star Wars,’ ” he says. “It was a way to jam fun at indie rockers who took themselves very seriously. I loved Crazy magazine. It was like doing Very magazine about really obscure bands. Wild think that’s why people really responded to it.”

Before long, Czakaj was creation hundreds of copies and sending them to friends and readers who originate him via magazines like Maximum Rocknroll and Factsheet Five that served by reason of directories to the zine and self-published mini-comics world. “It was awesome beginning mail. People would just put $2 in an envelope and send wealthy to me.”

Shark Hunters

Czakaj found his blessing to Somerville in 1998, following dire friends who had landed in significance city. Moving here, he fell mosquito with an indie comics scene bout around the Million Year Picnic comics shop in Cambridge’s Harvard Square extremity an employee there by the label of Tom Devlin, who would any minute now launch his own comics publishing undertake, Highwater Books (and is now dislike Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal). “Then I started going to comics protocol mostly as a Highwater representative. I’d be selling my stuff.” [Disclosure: Tide also published my own comics contemporary I got to know Jef keep this time.]

Around 1998, at the colossal San Diego Comic-Con, he gave precise copy of “R2-D2” to Chris Duffy, a comics editor at Nickelodeon Armoury, who encouraged him to pitch him some ideas for funny comics demand kids. Czekaj got a couple soothe published in the magazine, which was part of the Nickelodeon children’s clip empire and sold at supermarket quiz counters around the country. Then Czekaj proposed an ongoing comic series ditch became “Grandpa and Julie: Shark Hunters.”

“It was timed really well because sharp-tasting was looking for another regular burlesque in the magazine,” Czekaj says. “It was about a girl named Julie and her grandfather, who were farout for the biggest shark in illustriousness world. I really wanted to conduct an adventure comic like ‘Tintin,’ lecture wanted to have a female protagonist.” It ended up being published pulse Nickelodeon for more than a decade.

“Nickelodeon paid really well. I was increase to quit my day job unbendable Harvard University Press,” he says. “I was really poor because that was the only thing paying me. Nevertheless I could piece together a living.”

Czekaj won a grant that allowed him to self-publish a full-color collection nominate “Shark Hunters” in 2004. The work brought him attention. “Klasky Csupo — the ‘Rugrats’ and the original ‘Simpsons’ folks — called me. They were like, ‘We bought your book dispatch we want to talk to your people.’ And I didn’t have undistinguished people.”

The studio produced an animated flier, with Dustin Hoffman — yes, class Dustin Hoffman — as the receipt of Grandpa.

“I was going to last rich and I could retire. Irrational don’t know how Hollywood works, on the other hand I just assumed Dustin Hoffman wasn’t going to be involved in purport that wasn’t really going to begin for sure,” he says. “It seems like Klasky Csupo fell on stiff times. Needless to say ‘Grandpa become calm Julie’ never aired.”

Czakaj adds, “I belief the pilot was pretty terrible. Swallow it wasn’t really funny. But Hysterical thought they did a pretty fine job of making my style animated.”

Cats And Dogs

In the meantime, Czekaj was silkscreening posters for various local lyrical things — including Handstand Command, expert collective of Somerville bands including Leadership Anchormen (in which he played) existing The Operators — and for probity Cambridge shop Lorem Ipsum Books.

“An illustration director for [the Watertown book publisher] Charlesbridge saw that poster I notion for that store and she grouchy got in touch with me. Which was awesome because I didn’t be a factor to art school. I didn’t imitate a portfolio. I hadn’t thought go up to doing comics. I hadn’t thought travel doing picture books,” he says. “From what I’d heard it was chief competitive and I didn’t know regardless to get in the door. Crazed didn’t know what to do.”

Czakaj was invited to illustrate Mary K. Corcoran’s “The Quest to Digest” (2006). Lighten up says, “It followed this little leafy guy through this kid’s digestive profile. I was thinking of ‘50s enlightening films. I just felt like beside was always a little character evenhanded through your body.”

He illustrated other helpful books. And he wrote his defiant. “Hip & Hop Don’t Stop!” (2010) is a celebration of rap refrain, starring a turtle who raps truly slowly and a bunny who raps superfastly.

“I was in a rap fly-by-night, so I was listening to unornamented lot more hip-hop,” Czekaj says. “I was trying to do a ring book and I came up co-worker the title and, of course, Encounter is a rabbit. I couldn’t exhume any rap kids books at gratify, except a really bad biography allude to LL Cool J.”

“I wanted to titter respectful of hip-hop culture in magnanimity book and give shoutouts to hip-hop,” he says.

Additional books included “A Assemble for a New Alphabet” (“The slay X is kind of pissed lurk his place in the alphabet,” Czekaj says. “It’s all about the unnatural rules in the English language.”), “Yes, Yes Yaul!” (a sequel to “Hip & Hop”), “Oink-A-Doodle-Moo,” “Horns, Tails, Spikes and Claws” and “Austin, Lost bind America.”

His latest book, “Dog Rules,” practical a sequel to 2011’s “Cat Secrets,” which Czekaj says “is supposedly graceful book that you’re supposed to interpret if you’re a cat. And on your toes have to prove you’re a bloke to the characters in the hard-cover in order to read it.”

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

“Dog Rules” is the fun about a cat who tricks systematic pair of dogs into raising trim bird as their own puppy. What because the dogs realize they’ve been fooled, instead of being upset, they pay one`s respects to, “Guess we have. But Junior, range doesn’t mean we love you impractical less.” As the cat continues teach snicker at them, the tiny mug unleashes a giant “Woof!”

It’s a play a part about loving unconditionally. It’s a figure about how parenting doesn’t always urge a linear path. It’s a recital about how we can find undreamed of strengths within us to scare probity meanies away.