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David Shannon is holding a book he produced when he was five years old. His mother sent it to him from her archives ('she has everything I did before high school') when he was already a successful children's book author and illustrator. It is a set of pictures of a child doing a lot of things he's not supposed to do, drawn on faded orange paper. On each page are the words, 'No, David!' Shannon is delighted with this early opus, has clearly examined it a thousand times, and could probably do so a thousand more. 'Look,' he says, pointing to something that appears to be on fire. 'That's cookie batter.
This is the book that earned Shannon a 1999 Caldecott Honor. Well, not this book exactly, but a version of it that Shannon published years later called No, David!(Scholastic/Blue Sky, 1998), in which the eponymous protagonist, a pointy-toothed little devil, tries his mother's patience by climbing precariously for the cookie jar ('No, David!'), banging pots and pans ('David! Be quiet!'), jumping on his bed ('Settle down!') and playing baseball where he shouldn't ('Not in the house, David!'). The sequel,David G s to School (also Scholastic/Blue Sky), is due out in September.
This character has evidently struck a chord with kids. At author appearances, 'I don't even have to read,' Shannon says. 'I just turn the pages, and kids shout out the lines.' The books have prompted an outpouring of fan mail, too. 'You have no idea how many ways there are to spell 'naked,'' Shannon says with a grin.
What audiences connect with-particularly first through third graders-Shannon believes, is the fact that 'David is an Everykid. His antics are not too out of the ordinary. They're things all kids think of doing, and now they don't have to-David d s it for them.' Girls especially like David, he says. 'It's not that they don't get in their own trouble, but they really like to see boys get in trouble.'
It's particularly satisfying to Shannon to see the success of this book, since the process of putting it together was so close to his heart. The pictures didn't really begin to take shape until Shannon decided to throw out his professional illustration style and turn for inspiration to his childhood version of No, David. 'I'd been so concerned about how to turn the idea into a 32-page book, and then when I got to doing the paintings, they weren't working. The pictures were too flat-they just lay there.
'I wanted a little kid's style. The pointy teeth-those are straight from the original. When I finally described what I wanted to do-stick figures-to my editor [Bonnie Verburg] at Scholastic... well, they really took a chance with me on this one. Not to mention the sequel, which they committed to before we knew that this one would take off.'
By the time the book was finished, Shannon was so enamored of the idea of sticking to the original look that he even had Scholastic reproduce the orange paper for the book's endpapers. The paper Shannon used as a kid, it turns out, came wrapped around the X-ray film that his father, a radiologist, used in his work.
It's hard to believe that this neat, clean-cut, straight-shooting 39-year-old could have been such a hellion at age five. 'How'd I know about guns?' he wonders aloud, looking at another page of the original edition. For the published book, he is quick to point out, he and Verburg decided to exclude any dangerous pranks, like jumping off the top of the stairs with an umbrella.
Shannon may have reined in David's pranks, but the spirit of anarchy is still rampant in his work. That wild streak makes the 'David' series a recognizable heir to the darker books of his early career. The illustrations he has done for such notable authors as Jane Yolen, Audrey Wood and Robert D. San Souci have been brooding, sometimes even eerie.
Although his palette and sensibility have lightened considerably since he began writing his own books in 1994, there is still a dark undertone to the stories that gives Shannon's work a complexity and depth rarely found in books for very young readers. He brings characters-and in one book, the entire world-to the brink of catastrophe before landing them again in safe territory. The first book he both wrote and illustrated, How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball(Scholastic, 1994), is a parable of totalitarianism. The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza (Scholastic, 1995) portrays a crazed father obsessively overdecorating his house for the holidays and causing a riot among his neighbors. In A Bad Case of Stripes (Scholastic/Blue Sky, 1998), a girl at war with herself suffers an extreme version of chicken pox. And in the 'David' books, our hero pushes the limits of his mother's and his teachers' patience.
'Conflict makes a good story,' Shannon says, and his work is full of it.
A Fondness for Villains
Shannon lives in a cozy house on a peaceful, tree-lined street in Los Angeles, practically in the shadow of the Walt Disney Studios. When PW arrived, we have apparently interrupted him in the business of writing thank-you notes for the courtesies he received at the recent ALA convention in New Orleans, where the Newbery/Caldecott banquet was held. We scrutinize the items in his office: a couple of guitars, a map of his home state of Washington, artwork from nieces, nephews and godchildren.... His work surroundings reveal nothing nefarious. We settle down to talk while Fergus, Shannon's trusty West Highland white terrier, keeps an eye on us.
When PW remarks that Shannon seems an awfully well-balanced person to be the creator of his dark stories and images, he responds with a theatrically ominous laugh, 'In the famous words of Claus von Bülow: 'You have no idea!''
As a kid growing up in Spokane, he says, 'I loved Oliver Twist, but I liked the Artful Dodger more than Oliver. And I always thought the villains in Disney movies were really cool.' Although today's children prefer Captain Hook to Peter Pan, Shannon says, 'It was unusual when I was a kid' to be drawn to the villains rather than the her s.
But he wasn't a troublemaker. 'I've always been a pretty happy person. I guess I've satisfied that [dark] urge in my painting, which allows me to be sunny at home. Of course, you need both sides for a good story.'
Shannon describes his creative development as a series of small epiphanies. He was aware already in high school that he wanted to go into art as a career, but he was nervous about being a fine artist. 'My impression of fine art was that there wasn't much security,' he says. Besides, he wasn't really a painter. From a very young age, he had made pictures prompted by stories he was reading; he remembers making illustrations for The Hobbit when he was in eighth or ninth grade, and thought briefly about becoming a comic-book artist. It wasn't until he was at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena that he realized that illustrating was a way to make a living. 'It was a relief to discover that this thing I always liked to do, well, there were people who did it as a job.'
'That's one of the great things about author appearances,' he adds. 'You can show kids that there are people behind the books, who make them, and that they can do the same thing.'
When he first arrived in New York City in 1983 fresh from college, he began shopping his portfolio around to newspapers and magazines. After struggling to refine his style, he became a regular contributor to the New York Times Op-Ed section, which led to work at the Book Review. There, one of his pieces caught the eye of Scholastic editor-in chief Jean Feiwel, who approached him about illustrating Julius Lester's picture book How Many Spots D s a Leopard Have?
'I accepted, thinking it would be a good break, a one-shot,' Shannon says. 'But it was a lot of fun, and once that book came out in 1992, other editors started sending me manuscripts. I had no idea there was such a wealth and variety of stories in kids' books. This was the stuff I'd been drawing all my life: Indians, pirates, knights.'
When Verburg encouraged him to work on a book of his own, Shannon thought-as so many first-time authors do-of the dictum to write what you know. 'I decided to write about baseball,' he says. 'The trouble was that my illustration style was really dark. I didn't like painting sunny days, and I thought, 'How can I do a baseball story in stormy weather?'' Between talk of an impending baseball strike, and the fact that he was doing a lot of political illustration, an ominous political parable took shape. 'Georgie was the bridge between the editorial work and the children's books,' he says.
His other book for fall, The Acrobat and the Angel (Putnam, Sept.) is a collaboration with his brother, the writer Mark Shannon. Though it's set during the plague years in France, it emphasizes the irrepressible spirit of its hero. 'My children's stuff has gotten brighter,' Shannon says, 'and hopefully there's more humor in the stories. I'm really happy about that, and my wife says it's more cheerful around the house.'
Shannon points out a playful element that has become a regular feature of his work: hidden in each of his recent books is a picture of Fergus. He is carved in stone on a fountain in The Acrobat and the Angel ('it was hard working him into a period story'), and can be spotted next to a fire hydrant ('his favorite place') in No, David!
Shannon muses on the delicate balance of elements that makes a good children's story. One of the few times he has based a character on a real person was when he wrote The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza. His neighbor across the street d s elaborate Christmas decorations every year-'all homemade, with cutouts and everything. He's a true folk artist. The only thing store-bought are the lights. Unlike in the book, though, we love his extravaganza.' But a good story needs drama, so he has the fictional neighbors up in arms against the extravagant Mr. Merriweather for ruining their neighborhood. 'My concern while I was writing was that I would hurt my neighbor's feelings, and I think that kept Mr. Merriweather sympathetic. He isn't malicious, he just gets carried away. And so do the neighbors when they retaliate. I like the ambiguity in the story,' Shannon says. 'It leads to good discussions with kids, about who's right and who's wrong.' (The neighbor, as it turned out, loved Shannon's book, and even based some decorations in that year's Easter extravaganza on the artwork.)
Animating David?
The children's book work eventually squeezed out Shannon's business in editorial illustration, so that now all of his projects concern children's books in some way. On the wall of his office are a poster he did for Scholastic's 75th anniversary and a work in progress, a sketch for a poster for Children's Book Week. Another project on display is the layout for his next book, about which he's reluctant to say much. 'It won't be out for a year and a half yet. I'm just beginning the paintings. It's about a rainy day and how it affects people's moods.' The sketches are tacked up on the wall 'so I can see how the pages relate,' Shannon explains. 'A children's book is like a movie. You have to plan the pacing, the angles and perspectives, which pictures will be close-ups, which far away.'
While he hasn't actually worked as an animator, he has done 'inspirational art' (a starting point for the animation process) and designed characters for the children's television show Recess. Another current project is the screenplay for Georgie Radbourn, which DreamWorks is developing as a live-action film. Although the time hasn't come yet to talk about the look of the film, he is relatively philosophical about the prospect of surrendering control of Georgie, saying only,: 'I hope I'll have some input.'
It's another matter with David. Andrea Simon, Shannon's theatrical agent (he uses no literary agent), is talking to animation houses about the possibility of turning David into a television series character. The incorrigible lad would seem a natural in the age of Bart Simpson and South Park.
But lumping David into the naughty-boy genre elicits a wince from Shannon. Shannon is quite protective of his younger self. 'Bart knows that he's being bad,' Shannon points out. 'David is being bad unintentionally. He's just... enthusiastic.' There's also a difference in age range, he says. He sees David, even on television, appealing to a younger crowd.
Shannon isn't eager to move into other areas of children's entertainment. He makes an exception, though, for the possibility of collaborating with his wife, Heidi, an actress who d s voice-over work for Rugrats and other shows, and increasingly for computer games.
Shannon will soon have another in-house editor for his stories: his daughter, Emma, who is approaching her first birthday. 'We read to Emma every morning. You can tell when she likes a book by the way she pays attention. If she likes the text-if there are funny words or silly sounds-she watches you. In other books she pores over the illustrations, and wants to touch them. There's such an intimacy about having a kid on your lap and turning the pages. And just think about the drama contained in the act of turning a page. There's that suspense: What will be on the next page?'
As Shannon discusses his daughter, PW thinks it catches a glimpse of the dark streak it keeps expecting to find under the author's sunny persona. When he was planning his trip to the Newbery/Caldecott ceremony, Shannon's greatest fear was leaving Emma in their hotel room with a sitter. 'We'd only left her to go to CPR classes,' he admits. When they were packing, Shannon and his wife slipped in some recent photographs of the child. Of course, PW murmurs sympathetically, you wanted to have a picture to look at when you were away from her. 'No, no,' Shannon replies. 'We thought we should have a current photograph in case she got kidnapped.'
Bolle is an editor and writer living in Los Angeles.
