Chris Van Dusen Biography

Chris Van Dusen is the author-illustrator of The Circus Ship and the illustrator of the best-selling Mercy Watson books by Kate DiCamillo.
After high school he studied fine art at The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and graduated with a BFA in 1982. Eventually he started drawing cartoons and illustrations for a magazine and his career as an illustrator was born.
For more than ten years he worked as a freelance illustrator specializing in art for kids. Van Dusen was doing mostly editorial work and his illustrations appeared in magazines like Nickelodeon Family Fun and Disney Adventures.
One day he started thinking about drawing a picture of a boat stuck high up in a tree. At the same time a refrain kept running through his head - “Mr. Magee and his little dog Dee/ Hopped in the car and drove down to the sea”. The combination of these two things eventually became Van Dusen's first book “Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee” which was published in 2000. He's been busy writing and illustrating children’s books ever since.

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