Obituary: Our friend, James Proimos
By Shannon Maughan | Publishers Weekly
Jul 11, 2024
Children’s author, illustrator, animator, and designer James Proimos, known for his quirky picture books and boldly hued cartoon characters, died July 8 following an illness. He was 68.
James Proimos was born December 22, 1955, in New York City. He attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan before embarking on a career in advertising. For 20 years he worked as a copywriter and art director in cities around the country, earning several industry awards including the Clio, Addy, and One-Show.
In the late 1990s, Proimos’s ad work had become more focused on animated commercials and promotional characters and included co-creating a popular campaign for fast-food chain Taco Bell, which featured spokesbuddies Nacho (a cat) and Dog. Around this time, Proimos had also devised ways to expand his ideas to other media and saw his first picture books published: Joe’s Wish, about a grandfather who reconsiders his wish to be young again (Harcourt, 1998), and The Loudness of Sam, featuring an exuberantly noisy kid (Harcourt, 1999).
Another of Proimos’s characters, eight-year-old rock star Molly O!, was developed into the animated musical comedy show Generation O! which aired on the Kids’ WB from 2000–2001. While working on that program, Proimos hired Suzanne Collins as head writer. It was during this collaboration that Proimos encouraged Collins to try her hand at writing children’s books. She took the advice and in 2003, Gregor the Overlander, first in her bestselling Underland Chronicles series, was published by Scholastic. Collins later dedicated her novel The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008) to Proimos. The longtime friends would additionally team up for Collins’s autobiographical picture book Year of the Jungle, illustrated by Proimos, in 2013.
Proimos continued to move between books, TV, and film throughout his career, and launched Patricia von Pleasantsquirrel Pictures in Los Angeles in the mid 2000s and later cofounded production company Shiny Pear in Baltimore to bring other creators’ work to life as well. In a 2005 interview with Kidscreen, Proimos shared why he preferred to use books as his springboard for adaptation. “Every other medium I’ve worked in—even though the audience is the same—has a totally different set of rules of operation,” he said. “With books, it’s easier to just sort of do what I do.”
A troupe of memorable figures steadily paraded through Proimos’s catalog of more than 20 children’s books, including The Many Adventures of Johnny Mutton (Harcourt, 2001), Patricia von Pleasantsquirrel (Dial, 2009), Paulie Pastrami Achieves World Peace (Little, Brown, 2009), and Mac & Cheese (Holt, 2016). In 2011 he ventured down yet another new path with his lone YA novel, Twelve Things to Do Before You Crash and Burn (Roaring Brook). Proimos illustrated texts by other authors, including his son, James Proimos III, who wrote graphic novels Apocalypse Bow Wow and Apocalypse Meow Meow (both Bloomsbury, 2015), and he also collaborated with other illustrators, among them Johanna Wright (The Best Bike Ride Ever, Dial, 2012).
Freelance editor Karen Grove, who edited Proimos’s earliest books when she was with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, said, “From the moment I met James, I knew he was a force to be reckoned with. He had a vibrant energy, wild imagination, and boisterous sense of middle-grade humor. I fondly remember laughing with him on the phone as we worked on The Loudness of Sam and Johnny Mutton, sending his characters in every imaginable direction as tears slid down my face. What amazed me the most about his work was he never failed to draw out the warmth and love in each and every hysterical situation. The world will be a quieter place without James in it, yet my memories of strolling the streets of Baltimore with Jim at my side are fixed in my heart. Rest in peace, dear friend.”
Proimos’s agent, Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio, paid tribute: “Author/illustrators like James Proimos don’t come along every day. He was an outlier. One needs only to have a look at his books to see his unique view of the world reflected in the sensibilities and characters that inhabit his stories and the signature art that brings them to visual life. Whether it is Johnny Mutton, a sheep who refuses to follow the herd; or The Loudness of Sam, in which parents revel in their child’s “heard and not just seen” approach to life; or Joe’s Wish, in which old Joe Capri wishes for youth, only to find his true wish is to be old again and have a lot more days with his grandson, James stood true to his collection of poems that If (He) Were in Charge, the Rules Would Be Different. Honestly, I do wish he were in charge, and I do wish he had a lot more days. He was a good man with a big heart who ended every email with ‘Love, James.’ ”
David Levithan, VP, publisher, and editorial director at Scholastic, offered this remembrance. “When Suzanne Collins called me one day and said, ‘I have an idea for a picture book, but I can only do it if—’ there was no real need for her to finish the sentence. I knew it would conclude ‘—Jim does the illustrations.’ I wish I could take credit for what resulted, but if I’m being honest, most of my job on Year of the Jungle involved watching two great friends having a great time creating a great book. I’d long been a fan of Jim’s work, which is clever and hilarious and wise in that rare way that hits the brain and the funny bone at the same time. And I knew of the great camaraderie between Jim and Suzanne. But still, what a joy to see it all come together, with their mutual agent, Rosemary Stimola, proudly cheerleading us along. Is there anything better than working with old friends on new things? I’m not sure there is. Jim brought art to friendship, and friendship to art. Who could ask for anything more?”
And author Suzanne Collins said, “Jim was a dear friend—kind, funny, with a truly unique view of the world, which you see reflected in his delightful body of work. We met in TV, but it was his encouragement that led me to give books a try. Getting to collaborate with him on Year of the Jungle was a gift; his art perfectly captured the complexity of that story and made its telling possible. I will miss him always.”
