The other night, I was reading the book Overboard to Clark (Which is a bit young for him but he enjoyed the anarchic nature of it). Tabitha had enjoyed it too. I noticed that the illustrations were similar to another book that we have that I like quite a bit 
called Baby Cakes. I though that the illustrator’s name sounded familiar, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
When I thought about it more, I though the illustrations also looked like another book that we read to the kids all the time called My Favorite Toys (Jane Kemp and Clare Walters). And when I confirmed that he was the same person who illustrated that book, I decided that Sam Williams is easily one of m y favorite children’s book illustrators.
The surprise I had was in trying to find more information about him. A Wikipedia search doesn’t bring him up at all. And he doesn’t appear to have his own website (really?). The only information I could find about him was here. This site, Jacketflap, which I’ve never heard of before, says that he has illustrated over 70 books dating back to 1999. Wow!
Many of these titles are board books (which means technically my kids are too old for them). But I see he also has a series of Ready to Read books about twins (written by Ellen Weiss). He also seems to work a lot with the authors Karma Wilson (I like some of her stuff (like Baby Cakes but find other things a bit less than satisfying) and Sarah Weeks who writes very simple, but rather fun books.
It’s not always wise to choose the children’s books that you want based on the illustrator, as the writing could be not useful to you (baby books when they’ve outgrown them or books about twins if you don’t have them), or sometimes the writing just isn’t very good. But I know that I’ll check out more books with Williams as the illustrator just because I enjoy his drawing style so much.
In fact, three more I’m trying today are: Let’s Do That Again (Hiawyn Oram), Tummy Girl (Roseanne Thong) and Jiggle Joggle Jee (Laura Richards)
I found your page while I was looking for information on Sam Williams too. My kids have all loved ‘Shall we do that again?’ (it seems to have changed it name for some reason) the illustrations in it are so beautiful, I wondered if there was some of the artwork for sale, but sadly, it seems not. I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine do!
I am really surprised that we can’t find more about him online. We also really like Kevin Henkes, and we found that for one of his books, the pages fit perfectly into an IKEA frame and we wound up buying a new copy of the book to use as prints. It is weird that they changed the name…is it somehow more fun with an exclamation point than a question mark? They enjoyed Shall We Do That Again?/Let’s Do That Again!very much (as did I)
I love Sam Williams and especially OVERBOARD. I feel very lucky to have had Sam illustrate my BUSY IN THE GARDEN (Greenwillow) a few years ago. I hope to work with him again.
Cheers to you AND Sam Williams,
George Shannon
Hi George!
My kids love Tomorrow’s Alphabet, by the way (looks like a post is in order). We have been getting them into gardening so we’ll totally be checking out Busy in the Garden, too!
Thanks for writing!
Hi Paul,
I was sent this link and I am really pleased to meet you via the ether and to say thank you for your support and kind comments on my work. I am building a web site right now and hope to have it up there by Christmas. Perhaps it is time I got my act together on twitter and face book so I can talk about upcoming books. My sincere best wishes for now,
Sam Williams
Hi Sam!
It sounds like you don’t need the webs to secure some great gigs, so maybe this internet fad is unnecessary 🙂 I look forward to your site and will certainly link to it here when you get it launched–we must keep those Wikipedia people honest, right?
As long as your web presence doesn’t detract from your art, though. It’s really wonderful.
Thanks for writing–
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