I was still in art school when I was offered my first paying job. My professor asked me of I would be interested in illustrating a book called Kouzelny Destnik, or, The Magic Umbrella. Of course I was very excited about the prospect of having my work published and agreed immediately! Sometimes I wonder if the copy I own is the sole remaining one in existence.

My early work in illustration appears mostly in school textbooks. Here's an example of a French textbook for Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Sometimes when I look back on these early works it makes me laugh a bit. This particular example is, if I do say so myself, downright funky; you just don't find typeface like that anywhere these days.

It was while illustrating educational textbooks in Canada that I did Doodle the Poodle (written by Sherrill Ackland), a story about a poodle who just can't stay out of trouble. Needless to say, this book is no longer in print. Some time ago I was a flea market up near Bancroft, Ontario, and I chanced upon a copy selling for a quarter. "Oh my," I told the cashier. "I illustrated this book!" She laughed and said that if that's true I could have it for free, but I insisted on paying—it was a bargain, afterall.

About eight years later I did a book called The Big Yellow Frog. This was an interesting little challenge, because although the frog turns green at the end of the story, the book was a two-colour production. It was impossible to accomplish this if the text were in black ink, so I suggested we change it to blue, meaning we could combine blue and yellow to get green.

Everytime I look at a finished project I think about how I would change things were I to redo them, and this sentiment increases the older the books are. Of course, you can't get where you are without having been somewhere else before.