David Shannon

About David Shannon

David Shannon (born 1959) is an American author and illustrator best known for No, David! (1998), a Caldecott Honor book based on a book he made as a small child.

He was born in Washington, DC, on 5 October 1959 and grew up in Spokane, Washington. He studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, concentrating on political illustration, and moved to New York in 1983, where he drew for magazines and newspapers including the New York Times. His first illustrated book was Julius Lester's How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have? (1989). He lives in Los Angeles.

As an illustrator for other writers he painted Jane Yolen's Encounter and The Ballad of the Pirate Queens, Rafe Martin's The Rough-Face Girl, Audrey Wood's The Bunyans and Melinda Long's How I Became a Pirate (2003) and Pirates Don't Change Diapers. His own books include How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball (1994), chosen as one of the New York Times Ten Best Illustrated Books of 1994, and The Rain Came Down (2000), which won the Golden Kite Award. No, David! grew from a home-made childhood book whose only words were "no" and "David"; sequels include David Goes to School (1999), David Gets in Trouble, It's Christmas, David! (2010) and Grow Up, David! (2018). How I Became a Pirate won the Book Sense award for best picture book.

For collectors

No, David! was first published in 1998 by the Blue Sky Press, a Scholastic imprint. It was a 1999 Caldecott Honor book, a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of 1998 and a Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon title, so the 1998 Blue Sky first printing is the key edition.