Masterful Collection: Art and storytelling bring Brian Floca’s books to Life

By SHARON WHITE | Photos courtesy of BRIAN FLOCA and ROWBOAT WATSON

Temple native Brian Floca freely admits he wasn‘t fully awake when he got an early call back in 2014 announcing that his book, Locomotive, had been chosen to receive the most prestigious honor awarded for children’s illustration — The Randolph Caldecott Medal.

“I remember pacing in my predawn apartment, practicing getting the words right, so my parents might hear something more than gibberish when they picked up the phone,” Floca said.

Growing up, Floca recalls that drawing was a constant. He gives generous credit to his teachers and parents, Ted and Kathy Floca.
“There were always art supplies, and time to draw at home, and support at school,” he said.

And when his fourth grade teacher (Mrs. Persons) at Temple’s Thornton Elementary School used one of his early drawings to embellish her purple mimeographed lesson plan, Floca refers to it as “his first brush with publication.”

At Temple High, Floca drew cartoons for the school paper, created T-shirt designs and did well in art classes. After graduation in 1987, he attended Brown University and received his Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. While a student at Brown, he enrolled in classes at the neighboring Rhode Island School of Design, where he met acclaimed author and illustrator David Macaulay. This connection led to an introduction and subsequent friendship with writer, Avi, whose complete Poppy book series has been illustrated by Floca.

Since then, Floca has written and/or illustrated more than 50 children’s books and received dozens of accolades. He is a four-time recipient of the prestigious Robert F. Sibert Honor Award for informational books. He has also garnered high praise from The Horn Book, Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and his books have been selected three times for the annual New York Times Best Illustrated Book List. The New York Times called him “… a brilliant, exacting draftsman; he also knows how to give his pictures a cinematic energy.”

To dispel any myth that writing (let alone illustrating) for children is a simplistic act, one has only to crack open any of Floca’s books. Proof that hundreds of hours go into research, drawing, painting, composition and layout planning for a singular 32-page picture book (For the record, Caldecott medal winner Locomotive has 64 pages and took four years from concept to publication.)

“One of the great things about creating art — and research — is when you find something you love, and that interests you, you get to put it in a book and share it with other people,” Floca said during a 2013 speech at the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Many say to “Write what you know,” but he challenges: “Write what you want to know more about.”

In Floca’s case, those are subjects include spacecraft (Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11), racecars (Racecar Alphabet), trucks (Five Trucks) and dinosaurs (Dinosaurs at the Ends of the Earth: The Story of the Central Asiatic Expeditions). And, in his case, he has to know how to draw it all too.

Research for his writing and illustrating has taken Floca around the country and the world. He has traveled to Florence, Italy, to explore the architecture and journeyed to Great Britain to investigate castles. He took an extensive road trip from Omaha to Sacramento to research the history of the transcontinental railway for Locomotive, and visited the NASA Space Center when writing Moonshot. With sketchpad in hand, Floca said, “A drawing is worth a thousand words.”

In his latest book, With Dad, (written by Richard Jackson) Floca‘s nostalgic illustrations move the reader to reminisce about a military father and his son‘s camping trip set in the 1950s. Ever the perfectionist, Floca demanded his images accurately represent the time period. Fully researching the vehicles, clothing and setting, he even queried his Facebook friends (some from Temple) to inquire what sort of tent might have been used. Following the book’s printing, he publicly thanked everyone who had contributed “insights, pictures, and memories … that both suited the moment … and that were credible for the era.”

For the past 25 years, Floca has lived in Brooklyn, New York. He shares an art studio with four others in an old sweater factory. When the pandemic hit in 2020, his community was locked down tight. The streets appeared eerily empty. But in that quiet solitude, he began observing essential city workers continuing to do their jobs each day. He drew images of ambulance drivers, police officers, firemen, first responders, postal workers, bikers delivering food. In 2021, those sketches became the illustrations for his book, Keeping the City Going, which pays homage to service workers everywhere.

Floca’s life’s work is sharing information through art and storytelling. His most recent book project is titled Dinosaur Doomsday. He confesses he loves the grind and says, “At a certain point, in the best projects, you can get into a groove — you might even say get into character — and that can be an exciting, fulfilling, even subsuming experience.” It seems for this acclaimed author/illustrator, finding joy in the process of creating books is an honor in itself.

Find out more about Brian Floca at BrianFloca.com.