Tony DiTerlizzi might never have become the acclaimed illustrator he is today had it not been for an art teacher at Stuart’s South Fork High who noticed and nurtured his creative gifts. Back in those days, DiTerlizzi, now 55, says he was a skinny kid who listened to The Cure and didn’t feel like he fit in. He spent a lot of time drawing but wasn’t sure if it was a viable career, so he thought he might eventually pursue a career in marine biology. By senior year, he had taken every art class South Fork had to offer. Many teachers noticed his talent, but it was one particular art teacher, Tom Wetzl, who showed him that he could have a future as an illustrator.
“Mr. Wetzl wanted to do this one-on-one class with me, where I’d figure out a semester-long project that would become the crown jewel of my portfolio,” DiTerlizzi recalls.
“I decided I would redesign all the characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I modeled the Mad Hatter after Elton John, did an anime Alice, and made the Caterpillar kind of Muppet-y. I called the book Views from Wonderland. Mr. Wetzl saw it and said, ‘Wow!’ Then other people who saw it told me it was cool too. I was 17 at the time and realized then that I wanted to make books for a living.”
Now a best-selling author and illustrator of many popular fantasy/adventure books, DiTerlizzi is having a (really big) moment as of late. This past April, he watched one of the
fantasy series he co-created—The Spiderwick Chronicles—find a new generation of fans when it was released as a TV series and quickly became the most-watched debut on Roku of all time. Ten weeks later, the first season of his sci-fi trilogy WondLa debuted on AppleTV+ to rave reviews. “It has been such a surreal and strange experience,” DiTerlizzi says of the whirlwind release schedule.
DiTerlizzi grew up on County Line Road on the Palm Beach/Martin County border, attending Hobe Sound Elementary and Murray Middle School before South Fork High School. His father designed engines for Pratt & Whitney, and his mom stayed home to take care of him and his two siblings. She would often engage her kids with arts and crafts; DiTerlizzi vividly remembers his mother painting his bedroom a light sky blue, which he later embellished with dinosaurs on the sly.
“I saw it as a big canvas, but Mom was upset because she had just painted it,” he recalls. “She said, ‘Wait till your father gets home!’ My dad came home and taped a big piece of butcher paper on the wall and told me, ‘Okay, now you can draw.’ So I created a big prehistoric scene.”
He continued drawing throughout his youth, and then that pivotal interaction with Mr. Wetzl took place. When he finished high school, he attended the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and excitedly pursued a career as an illustrator after graduating in 1992. At the time, most of the job opportunities for illustrators were in editorial work, so he sent his drawings out to various magazines and publishers. He didn’t get any response, so he moved back home to his parents’ house, feeling dejected.
A few months later, he was catching up with some old high school buddies, playing Dungeons & Dragons, when one of those friends mentioned that his art was perfect for that type of work. On a whim, DiTerlizzi sent a few of his pieces to the franchise’s publisher—and they hired him to illustrate gaming booklets for the advanced D&D box set, Dragon Mountain. “At that point, I really thought I was on my way,” he says.
After working for D&D on various projects for a few years, he decided that if he really wanted to make it, he needed to move to New York City. So, in 1996, he headed for the big city.
His girlfriend at the time, Angela (who became his wife in 2000), was helping to open a new MAC Cosmetics store in SoHo, and one day she was doing the makeup of an editor from Scholastic Books. Recalls DiTerlizzi: “Angela worked her and got her number, and I called immediately.” A few days later, he went to Scholastic, where he eventually met with an editorial assistant who liked his work. One month later, that assistant (Kevin Lewis) became an editor at Simon & Schuster and helped DiTerlizzi with his first children’s book, Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-World Moon Pie Adventure, which was published in 2000.
His success soared from there. He won a Zena Sutherland Award for writing and illustrating Ted in 2001, and another for illustrating Mary Howitt’s classic poem The Spider and the Fly in 2002 (which also earned a Caldecott Medal and made him a New York Times best-selling author).
Then came the juggernaut middle-grade series The Spiderwick Chronicles, which he co-created with Holly Black. When the series was published (over 2003-2009), it sold over 20 million copies in more than 30 countries and was adapted as both a multiplatform video game and a feature film (released by Paramount Pictures in 2009). Shortly after, he had another hit with the sci-fi series WondLa. More children’s books followed, including Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight in 2014, The Broken Ornament in 2018, and A Very Cranky Book in 2023.
Incredibly, both The Spiderwick Chronicles and WondLa had a resurgence this year, with both being rebooted as television series. The Spiderwick Chronicles on Roku stars big names like Christian Slater, while stars like Brad Garrett and Teri Hatcher lend their voices to the animated WondLa. At press time, WondLa season two was scheduled to hit AppleTV+ in early 2025.
In the meantime, DiTerlizzi is keeping busy as always, going back and forth between his home base in Amherst, Massachusetts and his hometown of Jupiter. In October, he was in town for our photo shoot, squeezing in some time with his mom and sister before heading up to St. Petersburg for the Florida Art Education Association’s annual conference. As a guest speaker at the conference, he says, he wanted to let local teachers know how inspirational they can be to young artists, just as Mr. Wetzl was to him.
And more books are definitely on the way. Says DiTerlizzi: “I’m getting back to writing chapter books and middle-grade books. That’s where I like telling stories. And I have a lot more stories to tell.”
Fast Talk
Inspiring illustrators: “Growing up, we had a large coffee table book of Norman Rockwell’s covers for The Saturday Evening Post, which was a treasure chest of artistic inspiration. In the late 1970s, Mom bought Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries, and my mind was blown by their lifelike depictions of the denizens of Fae.”
Favorite children’s book as a kid: “Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak remains the perfect picture book. I still have fond memories of Mom reading The House at Pooh Corner and how far off and magical the Hundred Acre Wood seemed to me.”
If you were a fantasy character, you would be: “Peter Pan. He’s fearless, can fly, is friends with fairies and mermaids, and seems immortal—that’s a pretty good package.”
Describe your art style: “Imaginative and fantastical, though inspired by nature”
Local eats: “My wife and I have been eating at Dune Dog since it opened in the 1990s.”
Top spot for a nature fix: “I’ve hiked, camped, biked, canoed, ridden horseback, and everything else you can do at Jonathan Dickinson State Park since I was a kid. I love the various environments within the park and its storied history.” —Michelle Lee Ribeiro
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