Standing in front of a small audience in the Gallup Hill School library, author and illustrator David Biedrzycki asked the crowd a simple question.
“I need a little help right now. Do you guys want to help me?”
And as attentive and interested as a group of 8- and 9-year-olds could possibly be, Mrs. Curran’s and Mrs. Parulis’ third-grade classes shouted emphatically in unison, “YEAH!”
The group then gleefully proceeded to help Biedrzycki draw a character for one of his future books, Ace Lacewing Bug Detective in The Big Swat, giving suggestions on everything from how big Bugsy’s arms and legs should be to what color he should be, all the while using a photograph of a real stink bug for inspiration.
Using the drawing tablet on his laptop computer, Biedrzycki began to bring Bugsy to life on the large white screen at the front of the room, much to the delight of the assisting students.
“I get ideas for my characters in a lot of different ways,” Biedrzycki explained. “With Ace I had done the illustrations for a bug book before, a nonfiction book. So I really learned a lot about bugs and kind of went from there thinking about where these bugs would live and what kind of bugs would live there. Plus it’s a hoot because there are a lot of bug puns in [Ace Lacewing Bug Detective]. For example, the latest Ace book has a baseball team called The Stinkbugs in it, so we were trying to come up with bug baseball players and I heard a lot of good ones like Fly Cobb and Derek Skeeter, so it’s a lot of fun.”
Biedrzycki recently spent three days working with all the classrooms of Gallup Hill School on Sept. 29, 30, and Oct. 1, covering everything from his childhood and career to his artwork and published books. For the students it’s a fun and educational break from the norm. For Biedrzycki it’s a bit surreal as he can distinctly remember being an aspiring young artist in elementary school and has now come full circle.
“For as long as I could remember, I always loved to draw,” Biedrzycki wrote in a brief biography. “I think I have my older brother Bob to thank. Using simple shapes and letters like a big letter “C” and putting a little “c” in it to make an ear, he showed me how to draw someone’s face. The first face I drew looked like an alien from outer space but I kept practicing and practicing. After what seemed to be my 100th attempt I drew a face that looked pretty good. The next day when his friends were over our house Bob showed them the face his little 4-year-old brother drew. They couldn’t believe I did it and told me I was an awesome artist. I was so proud that I remember it to this day.”
Carrying that same passion and determination into high school, Biedrzycki continued drawing and painting and eventually went on to earn a degree in art from Kutztown State University. After graduating, Biedrzycki began working primarily as a commercial artist, with the first half of his art career beginning in 1980.
Working in a variety of forums, Biedrzycki’s drawings and paintings appeared on everything from magazine covers, billboards and posters to things like juice bottles and ice cream boxes. Some of his most notable early work includes the apples on the label of Mott’s applesauce, oranges for Tropicana, and various illustrations for Hood Dairy. Yet it wasn’t until children’s book author Jerry Pallotta asked Biedrzycki to illustrate one of his books that the second half of Biedrzycki’s art career began.
In 1996 the pair released their first collaboration, The Freshwater Alphabet Book, and Biedrzycki has been hooked ever since, releasing 16 books since that time with three more finished and awaiting release, and many more in the works. Soon after his first few books were published, Biedrzycki began to receive requests to visit schools, and after he released Ace Lacewing Bug Detective, the first book he authored and illustrated, he realized visiting schools was going to become a second profession.
“That’s when things really took off for me as far as being able to come into schools and talk about illustrating and writing and publishing,” Biedrzycki said. “[Traveling to schools] truly has become an integral part of my writing and illustrating process. When I go to write the book it’s a lot easier because I’ve been in front of an audience perfecting the story, retelling it over and over, getting a lot of good input from the kids and basically editing the story for weeks and weeks.”
Biedrzycki estimated that he traveled to around 90 schools across the U.S. and even internationally in 2007 alone. One of those schools was Ledyard Center School, where Library Media Specialist Kathleen Smith was impressed with Biedrzycki’s ability to captivate the students.
“It was just amazing,” Smith said. “The feedback I got from the teachers and from the kids, they just loved him last year. He’s great. He really connects with the kids. He gets right down on the floor with them and really gets right on their level. He’s inspired a lot of people here, and not just the kids either. I think we have a lot of budding authors here and to see someone who’s actually doing it is just awesome.”
After getting such rave reviews at Ledyard Center School in 2007 (Dr. Michael Graner, superintendent, called Biedrzycki’s presentation “fascinating”), Smith suggested that the Gallup Hill School PTO fund a visit from Biedrzycki this year, something they were more than happy to do.
“Kathleen [Smith] was really the person who is responsible for me coming to Ledyard again this year,” Biedrzycki said. “I was glad for the second invite. Traveling to all of these schools really keeps me in touch with my audience. I get energized by it, I really do. Every school you go to there are at least a couple kids that have some great ideas. Whether it’s the shy one in the back or the wise guy up front making jokes, I try to listen to everything they say because often I’m like, ‘Hmmm, that’s not a bad idea.’
“But at the same time they’re learning too because they’re seeing the process that I’m going through with all of my work. They see how it starts out and what I do to get it to the final product. And that’s the ultimate goal is for these kids to understand that process and be encouraged to delve into it themselves.”