David Small 

“All little children like to make marks on paper, but not many continue doing it for the rest of their lives. I am one who did,” David Small writes.

“My mother and teachers encouraged me. I got so much early praise for my drawings it may have spoiled me for learning other subjects. (Nobody did cartwheels when I memorized the capitals of the states!) On the other hand, nothing ever makes me as happy as when I am drawing.

“It might seem funny, then, when I tell you that I did not want to be an artist at first. As I began to think about a career, I wanted to write plays. When I was seventeen-years-old, professional actors staged some of my plays, and they got good reviews. Secretly, though, I found writing difficult. When a friend suggested I study art, I felt as if a block of cement had been taken off my back. I had never thought of art as a career. For me, it was so easy!

“When I became an art major in college, suddenly, like a jet, I took off. I worked hard because for the first time in my life I was doing something for which I had real aptitude. My favorite subjects were life drawing and anatomy.

“I received my BFA from Wayne State University in Detroit and did my graduate work at the Yale School of Art. Years later, while I was teaching art in a college, I wrote and illustrated my first picture book and began thinking about being an illustrator.

“In picture books, my interest in writing blended perfectly with my abilities in art. Now I have illustrated more than forty picture books and written many of them myself.

“When I am illustrating, I am the director, the camera man, all of the actors, the costumer, the set designer . . . the whole show! I get to sit in my studio and create the world.

“I see now that art has been the path I’ve followed though the forest for my whole life long. I cannot imagine my life without drawing, and I’m thrilled to have it as my job. I feel I am, quite simply, the luckiest man on earth!”

Books illustrated by David Small:

So You Want to Be President, written by Judith St. George (Penguin Putnam)
The Journey, written by Sarah Stewart (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The Mouse and His Child, written by Russell Hoban (Arthur Levine Books/Scholastic Press)
My Senator and Me: A Dog’s Eye View of Washington, D.C., written by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Scholastic Press) 
Once Upon a Banana, written by Jennifer Armstrong (Simon & Schuster)
When Dinosaurs Came with Everything, written by Elise Broach (Atheneum)