ABOUT MYSELF

I was born in Montreal, Quebec. The things I remember most about Montreal growing up are the sunny cold days of winter and snowdrifts that were over my head. And the bagels of course. Nice and chewy. I started drawing when I was three years old. I made my first art sale at six years old selling drawings of Snoopy and Charlie Brown to my classmates for 5 cents each.

I also did a lot of drawing in the back of my school text books. Mostly I would draw portraits of my teachers. Sometimes one of my friends would see me working on a sketch during class and grab it out of my hands to show the teacher. When this happened I always got nervous and was afraid that I might get in trouble. But most of the time the teacher who I drew would just smile.

Once I did get into trouble but it wasn’t for drawing. I ended up having to write the same sentence on the blackboard fifty times: “I will not throw snow balls in the school yard.” And I didn’t (throw snowballs that is) for a long time after that since my arm was aching from writing all of those sentences.

Growing up, I enjoyed participating in sports and joined the swim team at the “Y”. I sometimes got up very early in the morning and had a swimming practice before going to school. On some days I would have two practices: one before school and one after. When I got older I realized that I could not spend my life just in the water.

So I decided to go to law school. I remember very well the day that I wrote my law school entrance exam. The first thing they did when I entered the exam hall was to take my thumbprint. Someone somewhere has a file in it with the thumbprints of all the lawyers in the world. That’s a lot of thumbs.

After I finished law school I got a job working as a lawyer. When people meet me and ask what do I do for a living, I usually say “I’m a lawyer”. The next question is always: “Are you a criminal lawyer?” They are usually disappointed when I say: “No, I’m just a corporate lawyer”.

I think that to some people reading and preparing a lot of thick legal documents may not seem as exciting as defending a real live criminal. But I enjoy what I do. In fact, I think that many of the skills that I use in my job as a corporate lawyer have been very good practice for the children’s stories that I write.Lawyers need to be good at stringing words together. And so do writers.

In between lawyering, drawing and writing, I love to spend time with my family. I have a wife and two young boys. A lot of people think that I have a daughter because of Rachel, the main character in my children’s books. In some ways I suppose that she is a member of the family. She’s the quiet one that never asks me for more allowance.

It’s very handy to have kids when you are a children’s writer because you can try out your stories on them. Both of my boys are creative in their own ways and help me with my stories. It’s also handy to have a wife who is as supportive of my writing as my wife is. When I’m working on the illustrations for one of my books, I spend a lot of nights in my basement studio. Sometimes I will tell my wife that I am taking the garbage down to the garage…and then come back two hours later with charcoal on my hands.