Irish artist and writer Oliver Jeffers is unmistakably the author and illustrator of some of today’s most treasured children’s classics. The Day the Crayons Quit (2013, ALA Notable Book) is one of the best known and recognized books he illustrated. The story is wildly quirky and fun but more importantly, it inspires students to analyze the crayons' struggles and complaints and to see things from others’ perspectives. Oliver Jeffers often uses mixed media that creates a sense of reality. Take The Day the Crayons Quit and The Incredible Book Eating Boy (2006) as examples. The use of mixed media constructs such a believable reality that readers easily feel or visualize themselves in that setting with the characters.
Many of Jeffers’ stories are gently humorous and heartwarming tales of how a child’s friendship--often with an animal or a thing—is found, lost and regained. Those are feelings that readers, no matter children or adults, can easily relate to. It makes us wonder what kind of child the author has been. In an interview, Oliver Jeffers reveals that he didn’t become an avid reader until he went to university. As a child, he was more intereste d in “playing in the streets and getting dirty and climbing trees and digging holes” than books but he always loved to draw. While the family was watching TV, “I was drawing pictures”, he says.
Oliver Jeffers has won more awards than the number of books he has written or illustrated since 2004. As a relatively young writer this is an impressive achievement. Come to the EMS library to check out some of his works and immerse in his trademark warmth and humor.
List of works available in our EMS Libraries · How to Catch a Star · Lost and Found · The Incredible Book Eating Boy · The Way Back Home · The Great Paper Caper · The Heart and the Bottle · Up and Down ) · Stuck · This Moose Belongs to Me · The Hueys series · Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for All the Letters · Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth · The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt (illustrated by Jeffers)