Background Information: Mo Willems was born on February 11, 1968 in Des Plaines, Illinois and was raised in New Orleans.
He graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and then spend years traveling around the world drawing cartoon every day. (Which all have been published in the book You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons.)
WHERE IT ALL STARTED.......
He started his career out by traveling after graduating from high school. He performed stand up comedy in London. Then Mo moved to New York and studied film and switched to animation. The first part of his career was spent writing and animating for children’s television. For nine years he worked on Sesame Street where he created characters such as Suzy Kabloozie, and later created Sheep in the Big City for the Cartoon Network and The Off-Beats for Nickelodeon.
There is a Mo Willems App you can download on a phone or tablet. On this app one of the things it allows you to do is it teaches you how to draw Mo's Pigeon.
From the Television to Books: Later in 2003 he left his career at Sesame to become a stay at home father, as well as for a couple of other reasons. One was that if he wrote books he would be able to work at home. He loved the idea of having lunch with his family every day. He also had more freedom writing books than he would have had in writing for television.
MO'S BOOKS
Mo has written over 55 books in his lifetime so far....
This is an adobe spark video of me reading his first and most famous book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!