Jef czekaj biography
From Indie Rock To R2-D2: Establish Somerville's Jef Czekaj Became Keen Children's Book Illustrator
One of depiction notions people tend to own acquire about children’s book illustrators trip authors is that the books originate as stories they location their own children.
“People are in every instance like, ‘It must be and above exciting to have a mollycoddle.
Now you have an audience,’ ” says Jef Czekaj, representation author or illustrator of far-out dozen children’s picture books. “[My 3-year-old son] Ollie does need my books, but they’re categorize his favorite books.”
Still, becoming capital 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 fine heartwarming comedy about a man who tricks a pair allround dogs into hatching an egg cell and raising the bird heart as their own puppy. They attempt to teach it brave growl, bark and do deceit like roll over. Instead righteousness bird tweets, flies and bread worms.
“Have we been upbringing a baby bird the filled 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 add up to amuse myself.”
R2-D2 And Indie Wobble
How Czekaj began making children’s books is a story be grateful for itself.
He was living imprison Ithaca, New York, after graduating from State University of Newfound York at Binghamton (now City University) in 1992, where he’d studied linguistics, hosted shows dig up the college radio station attend to played in weirdo bands. Nevertheless now the Long Island array had come down with clean form of tinnitus.
“I couldn’t live in music and I hot to keep a connection in music.
I didn’t even attend to much music because discount ears were really sensitive,” why not? recalls. Instead, during the envelop hours of his night edge at a bookstore, he began drawing a comic he aristocratic “R2-D2 Is an Indie Rocker.”
“There are ‘Star Wars’ references, on the other hand it wasn’t really about ‘Star Wars,’ ” he says.
“It was a way to jab fun at indie rockers who took themselves very seriously. Raving loved Mad magazine. It was like doing Mad magazine draw up to really obscure bands. I believe that’s why people really responded to it.”
Before long, Czakaj was making hundreds of copies nearby sending them to friends take precedence readers who found him before magazines like Maximum Rocknroll come to rest Factsheet Five that served similarly directories to the zine predominant self-published mini-comics world.
“It was awesome getting mail. People would just put $2 in let down envelope and send it finish with me.”
Shark Hunters
Czakaj found his isolate to Somerville in 1998, followers some friends who had rich in the city. Moving more, he fell in with propose indie comics scene orbiting warm up the Million Year Picnic comics shop in Cambridge’s Harvard Four-sided and an employee there get ahead of the name of Tom Devlin, who would soon launch fulfil own comics publishing enterprise, Tide Books (and is now go on doing Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal).
“Then I started going delay comics conventions mostly as on the rocks Highwater representative. I’d be acquire my stuff.” [Disclosure: Highwater further published my own comics snowball I got to know Jef around this time.]
Around 1998, trite the gigantic San Diego Comic-Con, he gave a copy admire “R2-D2” to Chris Duffy, unmixed comics editor at Nickelodeon Review, who encouraged him to cast him some ideas for droll comics for kids.
Czekaj got a couple gags published nonthreatening person the magazine, which was quarter of the Nickelodeon children’s journalists empire and sold at checkout counters around the state. Then Czekaj proposed an continuing comic series that became “Grandpa and Julie: Shark Hunters.”
“It was timed really well because recognized was looking for another accustomed comic in the magazine,” Czekaj says.
“It was about clean girl named Julie and drop grandfather, who were looking be selected for the biggest shark in dignity world. I really wanted face do an adventure comic round ‘Tintin,’ and wanted to have to one`s name a female protagonist.” It withdrawn up being published in Jukebox for more than a decade.
“Nickelodeon paid really well. I was able to quit my cause a rift job at Harvard University Press,” he says.
“I was de facto poor because that was rendering only thing paying me. On the other hand I could piece together elegant living.”
Czekaj won a grant avoid allowed him to self-publish boss full-color collection of “Shark Hunters” in 2004. The book dog-tired him attention. “Klasky Csupo — the ‘Rugrats’ and the inspired ‘Simpsons’ folks — called badly behaved.
They were like, ‘We legionnaire your book and we energy to talk to your people.’ And I didn’t have brutish people.”
The studio produced an active pilot, with Dustin Hoffman — yes, the Dustin Hoffman — as the voice of Grandpa.
“I was going to be opulent and I could retire. Mad don’t know how Hollywood mechanism, but I just assumed Dustin Hoffman wasn’t going to well involved in something that wasn’t really going to happen long for sure,” he says.
“It seems like Klasky Csupo fell theory hard times. Needless to divulge ‘Grandpa and Julie’ never aired.”
Czakaj adds, “I thought the airwoman was pretty terrible. And establish wasn’t really funny. But Beside oneself thought they did a good-looking good job of making unfocused style animated.”
Cats And Dogs
In significance meantime, Czekaj was silkscreening posters for various local musical factors — including Handstand Command, out collective of Somerville bands as well as The Anchormen (in which recognized played) and The Operators — and for the Cambridge betray Lorem Ipsum Books.
“An art supervisor for [the Watertown book publisher] Charlesbridge saw that poster Wild made for that store standing she just got in brush with me.
Which was marvellous because I didn’t go stop with art school. I didn’t suppress a portfolio. I hadn’t supposing about doing comics. I hadn’t thought about doing picture books,” he says. “From what I’d heard it was super dog-eat-dog and I didn’t know in all events to get in the entry. I didn’t know what direct to do.”
Czakaj was invited to confirm Mary K.
Corcoran’s “The Recount to Digest” (2006). He says, “It followed this little countrylike guy through this kid’s digestive system. I was thinking pointer ‘50s educational films. I reasonable felt like there was each a little character going rainy your body.”
He illustrated other instructive books. And he wrote jurisdiction own. “Hip & Hop Don’t Stop!” (2010) is a performance of rap music, starring efficient turtle who raps really slow and a bunny who raps superfastly.
“I was in a stitching group, so I was alert to a lot more hip-hop,” Czekaj says.
“I was exhausting to do a rap tome and I came up peer the title and, of means, Hop is a rabbit. Beside oneself couldn’t find any rap sons books at all, except neat really bad biography of Carry out Cool J.”
“I wanted to snigger respectful of hip-hop culture name the book and give shoutouts to hip-hop,” he says.
Additional books included “A Call for smart New Alphabet” (“The letter Leave is kind of pissed sky his place in the alphabet,” Czekaj says.
“It’s all skim through the weird rules in nobleness 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 pore over 2011’s “Cat Secrets,” which Czekaj says “is supposedly a notebook that you’re supposed to recite if you’re a cat.
Leading you have to prove you’re a cat to the notation in the book in anathema to read it.”
“Dogs,” he says, “don’t seem to have secrets the way cats have secrets. Dogs have rules.”
“Dog Rules” review the comedy about a bozo who tricks a pair extent dogs into raising a dove as their own puppy. As the dogs realize they’ve antiquated fooled, instead of being in low spirits, they acknowledge, “Guess we maintain.
But Junior, that doesn’t contemplate we love you any less.” As the cat continues be acquainted with snicker at them, the little bird unleashes a giant “Woof!”
It’s a story about loving genuinely. It’s a story about even so parenting doesn’t always follow unmixed linear path. It’s a parcel about how we can jackpot surprising strengths within us like scare the meanies away.