As a longtime commercial illustrator, Jeff Drew has always strived to find that sweet spot where hobby and career align. “I know it’s rare for someone to really be able to do that cross section of ‘this is what I love to do, and I can make a living at it.’ That’s been the goal all along,” he says.
With the publication of his debut picture book, Alfie Explores A to Z: A Seek-and-Find Adventure (Random House), he’s found yet another way to partner career success with personal passion. “I know this is a kids’ book, but I really was making it to entertain myself as much as anything,” Drew says.
In the book, readers must search for bookworm Alfie and his pet dust bunny, Betty, hidden within a bookshelf full of 26 titles like The Hydra’s House Party Hootenanny and Video Game Vacation. Tongue-twisting rhymes accompany each letter with occasional hints about Betty’s whereabouts as the beloved bunny manages to keep one hop ahead.
Drew’s first foray into children’s books can be traced back to his time as a painting student at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. “Back in ’96, I tried to do my first kids’ book, but when I tried to get it published, it was just crickets,” he says.
Alfie Explores A to Z originally started as an art project. “I got the idea for the book when I started selling prints and posters online,” he says. “I was just thinking from a sales perspective—what would be cool to have on your wall that you would want to look at a lot?”
Soon realizing the potential for the pieces to come together as a book, Drew spent roughly a decade systematically going through the alphabet, researching and making extensive lists of the hundreds of animals, items, and foods that humorously populate each spread. “I love learning with pictures,” he says.
By contrast, the process of finding an agent and getting published was remarkably rapid. Drew initially reached out to about a dozen agents. “Most of the responses I got were that rhyme isn’t something that they were interested in and also alphabet books didn’t sell,” he says. “I was like, Oh, great, the two things I do.”
But then Drew saw mention of Kirsten Hall at Catbird Agency in Publishers Weekly. “She just sounded like the perfect person—she seemed like she was into the kind of thing I was doing,” he says. He sent the book off to her blindly, she responded positively, and before long Drew was working on revisions with a team at Penguin Random House: editors Mallory Loehr and Maria Correa and art director Nicole Gastonguay.
The group’s feedback helped him make the work even more of a kid-friendly narrative through the introduction of dust bunny Betty, changes to Alfie (who originally had hair and no antennae) to make him look a bit more “youthful and cute,” and the addition of the conceit that Alfie lives in the library behind the bookshelves.
The end result—jam-packed with slyly humorous photorealistic depictions of an alien in an argyle sweater or a lynx in a leisure suit—is clearly influenced by Drew’s longtime appreciation for Mad magazine and the cartoonists Sergio Aragonés and Jack Davis.
“My seek-and-find experience was Mad magazine, because so many of those illustrations were just packed to the gills,” Drew says. “That’s the stuff that I would tear out of the magazine and hang on my wall when I was a kid. I have always been a fan of that kind of artwork.”
Initial feedback suggests readers are similarly drawn to the illustrations’ time-absorbing qualities. “I have a couple emails from people saying that it’s a nice parent hack as far as going to bed at night because it’s one book, but really it’s 26 nights,” he says.
Drew’s next project, with which he describes himself as being “100% morning-to-night obsessed,” also stars Alfie but has to do with history, time travel, and mythology. “It’s just the way I like to spend my time,” he says. “It’s nice to be lost in your own world for the day.”
