Dunnick, Regan

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Dunnick, Regan

Personal

Male. Education: Ringling School of Art, B.F.A., 1975.

Addresses

Home and office—Sarasota, FL. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Illustrator. Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, FL, member of faculty. Exhibitions: Work included in exhibits at United Nations Environmental Show and New Pop Show, and in permanent collections at Library of Congress.

Member

Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, Graphics, Print and Art Direction.

Awards, Honors

Children's and Young-Adult Books category winner, Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards, 2002, for Sweet Dreams, Douglas.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Sweet Dreams, Douglas, Junior League of Houston (Houston, TX), 2002.

ILLUSTRATOR

Pierre Mornell, Games Companies Play: The Job Hunter's Guide to Playing Smart and Winning Big in the High-Stakes Hiring Game, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

Linda Ashman, Maxwell's Magic Mix-Up, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 2001.

Gary Soto, Fearless Fernie: Hanging out with Fernie and Me, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2002.

Joan Holub, Riddle-iculous Math, Albert Whitman (Morton Grove, IL), 2003.

Joan Holub, Geogra-fleas: Riddles All over the Map, Albert Whitman (Morton Grove, IL), 2004.

Carolyn Crimi, The Louds Move In!, Marshall Cavendish (New York, NY), 2006.

Kathy Shaskan, How Underwear Got under There: A Brief History, Dutton (New York, NY), 2007.

Sidelights

Inspired by both retro and postmodern design, Regan Dunnick has contributed illustrations to a variety of children's picture books, including The Louds Move In!, Riddle-iculous Math, and Fearless Fernie: Hanging out with Fernie and Me. As an illustrator, his works incorporate a variety of media, such as water color, acrylics, India ink, and charcoal pencil. As a man of multiple styles, Dunnick easily alternates between illustrating books for children and creating stylistic images for corporate clientele that include Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times. Working with the Junior League of Houston, Dunnick also took on the task of writer with Sweet Dreams, Douglas, part of the organization's literacy initiative. Reviewing this story, about a restless young pup who surveys the bed-time dreams of a variety of unusual friends as a way of avoiding his own bed time, a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that Dunnick's "chipper outing is told entirely in dialogue and pictures."

Dunnick's illustrations for Carolyn Crimi's The Louds Move In! detail the racket of an unusually vocal family. The aptly named neighborhood of Earmuffle Avenue

finds the tranquility and silence of their community disrupted when a family of boisterous newcomers settles in. The Loud family generates constant clamor, banging pots and pans, clipping in their garden, and bouncing basketballs. In an effort to resume the peace of their once-silent neighborhood, Miss Shushermush, Mr. Pitterpatter, and Miss Meekerton march to the Loud family's house to ask them to quiet down, but find the rambunctious clan on vacation. The silence that follows makes the neighbors realize how much they have enjoyed the Loud family's clatter.

Dunnick accentuates the action and characters of The Louds Move In! by incorporating white space into his illustrations. Martha V. Parravano, writing in Horn Book, explained that this use of "clean white space" accentuates the artist's "cartoony acrylic paint and charcoal pencil illustrations." A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that Dunnick's character-revealing illustrations "crank the volume of his cartoon scenes," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that Dunnick's paintings "capture the neighbors' different temperaments" by detailing the Louds' brightly colored clothes and animated faces and then contrasting such features with the family's conservative, quiet-looking neighbors.

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 2001, Hazel Rochman, review of Maxwell's Magic Mix-Up, p. 2016; March 15, 2002, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Fearless Fernie: Hanging out with Fernie and Me, p. 1254; October 15, 2003, Hazel Rochman, review of Riddle-iculous Math, p. 406.

Horn Book, May, 2001, review of Maxwell's Magic Mix-Up, p. 308; July-August 2002, Roger Sutton, review of Fearless Fernie, p. 480; May-June 2006, Martha V. Parravano, review of The Louds Move In!, p. 293.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2002, review of Fearless Fernie, p. 52; February 15, 2006, review of The Louds Move In!, p. 180.

Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2001, review of Maxwell's Magic Mix-Up, p. 77; August 19, 2002, review of Sweet Dreams, Douglas, p. 87; March 13, 2006, review of The Louds Move In!, p. 64.

School Library Journal, July, 2001, Mary Elam, review of Maxwell's Magic Mix-Up, p. 72; March, 2002, Lauralyn Persson, review of Fearless Fernie, p. 258; March, 2004, Nancy A. Gifford, review of Riddle-iculous Math, p. 196; November, 2004, Bethany L.W. Hankinson, review of Geogra-Fleas!: Riddles All over the Map: A Brief History, p. 124; May, 2006, JoAnn Jonas, review of The Louds Move In!, p. 85.