Ryan Higgins ’06
From field biology to Bruce the Bear
By Kiera O’Brien ’18
Acclaimed children’s book author and illustrator Ryan T. Higgins ’06 keeps the only existing copy of his very first publication, Moon Frog and the Moon Gold, within easy reach of his desk at his home studio. “I had been asked so many times by kids what my first book ever was that I had to go track this one down. It was in my mom’s attic. I’m glad I did because now I can show kids that I started in the same place as them: my first grader drawings look like something a first-grader would do. It’s important to show them that I have a cool job making books for children because I worked really hard.”
Along with years of hard work and a lifelong passion for cartooning, Higgins credits a well-timed conversation with his COA advisor, John Anderson, as pivotal in shaping his career as an author. For his first two years at COA, Higgins opted to pursue his second passion, wildlife biology, over cartooning. “I always wanted to grow up to be a cartoonist, but I also realized it’s a pretty hard business to break into. If I couldn’t do that I wanted to run around in the woods following coyotes or black bears.”
Things shifted in his third year while weighing internship opportunities. “There was a possibility I could do an internship studying grizzly bears out West, but I also had a connection with one of the original cartoonists from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Steve Levine.” Both were right up his alley, and both presented a very different set of challenges and opportunities.
At the time, Higgins recalls, “I didn’t think cartooning was feasible. But one day John Anderson pulled me aside and said, ‘Ryan, I really enjoy reading your research papers, but such papers aren’t typically supposed to be funny.’ That was his way of encouraging me to follow my passion for cartooning.” Higgins jokes that, while he would have enjoyed being a bear biologist, he probably “went with the safer career option.”
Higgins hasn’t completely lost sight of bears, or field biology, however; his New York Times award-winning series Mother Bruce centers around a curmudgeonly black bear named Bruce. “I think I made the first book partly because I felt guilty about not studying bears. I was like I gotta do something with bears. But they’re not even my favorite animals!” Higgins is also quick to point out that black bears like Bruce, and indeed all the other animals in Mother Bruce, are local to Maine, where he lives and works. “They’re talking animals, but I do try to insert some of my biology studies in there. They’re all animals from Maine, unless they arrive on a tour bus, like the elephants that show up at one point.”
Apart from the ecological accuracy behind his children’s books, Higgins reflects that his time at COA instilled “an interdisciplinary approach to life” and art that he carries with him today. “As a cartoonist, my job is marrying words and pictures, as a grownup, writing for kids, so I cast a pretty wide net. I’m trying to do a lot all at once.”
Lately, this interdisciplinary approach, cultivated at COA, has been extending beyond the page: “I started a solar farm business, Loki Solar, with an engineer friend. I wanted to invest in something I really believed in.” Luckily for fans of Bruce the Bear, the solar farming business is slow and steady, and Higgins is already at work on another book in the series.
