Dan Santat

Dan Santat (born October 2, 1975, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is an American author and illustrator who is primarily known for his children’s books and graphic novels. He won the Caldecott Medal for most distinguished picture book in 2015 for his mixed-media illustrations in The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend (2014), which he also wrote.

Santat grew up in California, the only child of parents Adam and Nancy Santat, who had emigrated from Thailand in 1968. They wanted their son to become a medical professional, so he studied microbiology at the University of California, San Diego. After graduating in 1995, however, Santat chose not to go to medical school. Instead he pursued his interest in drawing, attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration in 2001.

Santat was employed in a number of art-related jobs before publishing his first picture book, The Guild of Geniuses (2004). The story follows a character named Frederick who tries to cheer up his friend Mr. Pip, a monkey. He takes Mr. Pip to a group of geniuses, who try different activities and inventions to distract him. After the publication of Geniuses, Santat was asked to illustrate other children’s books, including the Otto Undercover series by actress and author Rhea Perlman, the Calendar Club mystery series by Nancy Star, and Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot series by Dav Pilkey.

By the mid-2010s Santat had illustrated dozens of books, including Mac Barnett’s Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World) (2010) and Oh No! Not Again! (Or How I Built a Time Machine to Save History) (2012), Corey Rosen Schwartz’s The Three Ninja Pigs (2012) and Ninja Red Riding Hood (2014), and Samantha Berger’s Crankenstein (2013) and A Crankenstein Valentine (2014). Santat has written a few of his own works, including the graphic novel Sidekicks (2011), which tells the story of a superhero and his “superpets,” but he realized he wanted to publish more personal stories. In 2014 he published the award-winning The Adventures of Beekle about an imaginary friend who tires of waiting for a child to imagine him and leaves home to find a companion. The book was inspired by Santat’s eldest son. Before becoming a father, Santat, who has two children with his wife, Leah Tager Santat, often wondered what his child would be like, in much the same way his character Beekle imagines his real friend before meeting him or her.

For the rest of the decade, Santat published such titles as Are We There Yet? (2016), exploring the imagination of a boy stuck on a long car ride, and After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again (2017), which continues the story of the nursery rhyme character’s life after he fell off the wall. The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 allowed Santat to focus on his memoir, A First Time for Everything, which he published in 2023 as a graphic novel. It recounts a middle-school class trip to Europe.

Santat’s other graphic novels include The Aquanaut (2022), which centres on the world of sea creatures. He also continued illustrating books by other authors, including Rodzilla (2017) by Rob Sanders, Dude! (2018) by Aaron Reynolds, and Little Fox and the Wild Imagination (2020) by Jorma Taccone. In addition to writing and illustrating, Santat created the animated television series The Replacements (2006–09). The action-adventure show records the misadventures of two orphans who order new parents and get a British spy mother and a stuntman father.