It’s the birthday of artist and children’s book author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers (1977), whose bestselling picture books have sold more than 10 million copies. If there’s a child in your life, you’ve probably heard of How to Catch a Star (2004), Lost and Found (2005), The Incredible Book Eating Boy (2006), Stuck (2011)…

Jeffers was born in Australia but raised in Northern Ireland, which he says gave him a “healthy disrespect for authority.” He claims he wasn’t very interested in books as a child, being more interested in getting into trouble, but he was always an artist. He ended up in children’s books almost by accident: during his last year in art school at the University of Ulster, he had an idea for some coursework that just worked well as a picture book, and upon graduation he decided to try getting it published. He sent his work to ten of the biggest publishing companies, settled in for a long haul of rejection, and got a call the next afternoon from HarperCollins with an offer. How to Catch a Star was his first book.

Many of Jeffers’ books are genuinely moving and poignant (Lost and Found is a great example), but he’s also known for humor that appeals to adults as well as children. If you can read Stuck without laughing out loud, then your soul, my friend, is a cold dead barren place. Get help. (See Jeffers reading from the book in his charming Irish accent right here.)

Other books by Jeffers include The Heart and the Bottle (2010), This Moose Belongs to Me (2012; spoiler: it doesn’t), The New Sweater (2012) and others in the Hueys series, and most recently Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth (2017). He’s also illustrated books for other authors, including the bestselling The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt (2013).

Jeffers now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son. He eats his cereal without milk.

Have a delightful Thursday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.