About David.

Dave is a retired secondary art teacher and a practicing artist.

In 2000 he received the British Columbia Art Teacher of the Year Award at the Graduation Level from the BC Art Teachers Association.

Dave spent thirty years teaching art in the public school system to secondary students.

He works with his writer wife, Diane, a writer and retired English and English Language Learner (ELL) teacher.

Dave worked to support the arts locally and served as the President of the Delta Arts Council. He was instrumental in starting and facilitating the Delta Studio Stomp where people came to homes or studios of artists in Delta. They were awarded recognition from the Delta of Chamber of Commerce in 2016. His designs were also chosen for the 2015 and 2019 Delta Banner Awards.

Dave also participated in the Day of the Dead exhibition on Granville Island for which he received a certificate from the Mexican Consulate.

 When his five kids were young he would make up characters and stories, some of them based on sea creatures off the West Coast of British Columbia. Now he is doing it for a larger audience.

Dave was born in Campbell River on Vancouver Island but moved to Ontario as a baby. After that his family took him to Rome, Italy before coming back to Canada. He spent five years in Nova Scotia where he was a competitive swimmer. Then he played basketball in Winnipeg and added rugby in Vancouver. Since turning nineteen he has lived and worked in the lower mainland playing and coaching basketball and rugby as well as producing his art work.

In 2019 Dave and Diane moved to Nanaimo, BC,.

What Are Weirdly Wonderful A-Z, Amazing Airborne A-Z and Eccentric Earthlings A-Z about:

What do young people imagine when they hear about creatures for the first time?

* If they have never seen an elephant seal they might picture the head of an elephant on the body of a seal.

* If they have never seen an oven bird they might picture a bird baking cookies in an oven.

* If they have never seen a rubber boa they might never know that BC has a boa.

These plus many other imaginative creations fill the pages of these books so you will meet some wacky creatures, with a twist, from the West Coast of Canada.

Just so you don't get stuck in the weird and wonderful, after you laugh, you'll learn the scientific names, learn some facts about the creatures and see what they look like in realistic drawings.

What is Somewhere about:

Dave and Rudi collaborated on this book.

Rudi's text captures diversity in the world and Dave's illustrations provide a rich interpretation of this.

Things happen simultaneously so there is always Somewhere else that another event is occurring.

Dave's illustrations echo this. See if you can figure out how.