When I was young, one of my favorite picture books was Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat by Morrell Gipson. I loved the bear's silly name and the funny illustrations. Most of my time was not spent on reading though - I was always playing baseball, soccer or basketball.

  Another favorite activity was drawing - especially cartoons. I could always impress my friends with a quick rendering of Mickey Mouse or Pluto. My parents encouraged my creativity, and I always did well in art class, but it wasn't until I turned 20 that I decided to make my living as an artist.

   I worked at whatever jobs I could find: cleaning buildings, supervising children at a playground, mixing mortar for masons. It didn't matter what I did by day, at night, I was an artist. I painted pictures every evening, and filled my room with drawings and paintings.
   How did I know how to paint? I read books about art.

   Soon I was a professional artist, painting during the week and selling my pictures to tourists on the weekend. All this practice paid off. I was offered a job at a film studio, painting backgrounds for animated films. This is where I learned how to make people laugh with funny pictures.
   In 1978, my dog Buffy introduced me to Margaret Cameron and her dog Booker. We all fell in love (I liked Marg the best) and moved from the city to a big old house in the country. Life was different out there. Lots of funny things happened to us, like the time the cows wandered into the cabbage, or when I thought it might be fun to keep bees. I couldn't resist doing cartoons about all these funny experiences. I even started writing short stories about my adventures and sending them off to a magazine called Harrowsmith.

   In 1985, I was asked to illustrate my first picture book, The Dingles by Helen Levchuk. I had so much fun illustrating that book, that I started writing my own stories. There was only one problem: no one wanted to publish them!
   One day, I showed my stories to Frank Edwards, a friend from Harrowsmith magazine. Frank knew all about producing quality books. He thought we should form our own publishing company, and that's just what we did. We called our company Bungalo Books. Since Frank and I would often read to our children, we decided our books should be fun for both young people and adults. Our motto would be: "Reading for the Fun of It!"
   My first book was called The Bungalo Boys: Last of the Tree Ranchers. In our first year, we printed 5,000 copies and sold most of them. Since then, Frank and I have produced more than 35 titles and sold almost 1.5 million books.

   In 1993, my family and I moved to Tucson, Arizona. Frank and I are still working together (our desks are just a little farther apart!). We have some exciting books planned for the future. We hope that children and parents will continue to enjoy our stories and that Bungalo Books and our new company Pokeweed Press will help young people everywhere begin a lifetime of "Reading for the Fun of It!"

     Happy reading!