A bi-weekly feature profiling the talented authors and illustrators who bring children’s books to life.

As a sixth grader, Jarrett J. Krosoczka remembers enrolling in private art classes because the public school budget for art instruction was slashed in his Worcester, Massachusetts elementary school. He experimented with cartooning, animation and comic books. “Every week, I so looked forward to going to class,” Krosoczka says (pronounced crow-ZAUS-ka). In ninth grade, his grandparents gave him a video camera. “I put together skits with friends. When we had to do a report for school, I almost always convinced my teacher to let me do a video.” In a high school English class, Krosoczka and a group of classmates created an animated cartoon of Stephen King’s Misery. “I drew the pictures, and other kids colored them in and did the voices,” he says. More…