Dossier f13 - Spring Break at Pokeweed School

John Bianchi, an illustrator, was born in Rochester, NY and came to Canada about 1968 after a stint in the U.S. navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. Disillusioned with American politics and the Vietnam War, Mr. Bianchi left the navy and moved to Ottawa. Unable to find work at first, he survived as a sidewalk artist – selling his paintings to tourists outside the National Arts Centre.
Bianchi eventually found work at Crawley Films as an animation background artist and later as an illustrator with CJOH TV. He met his wife, Margaret Cameron, an Ottawa native, at that time and they eventually moved to the country to start a family. He got his start as an illustrator with Harrowsmith magazine in the late 1970s.
In 1993, John and his family (daughters Jessica and Sasha) moved to the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Bianchi travelled extensively across Canada and the United States, encouraging thousands of students a year to get active reading, writing and drawing. He was also a popular guest at regional and national literacy conferences. He wrote and illustrated more than 20 learn-to-read books for The American Reading Company.