Jenny Campbell
The concept of syndication has been familiar to Jenny Campbell since her high school days in Phoenix, Ariz. That's when her father, Don G. Campbell, a longtime business writer, got his first syndication deal.
Watching her father work hard instilled in Jenny a love of writing and journalism. Throughout college she worked full time at The Arizona Republic, starting as the paper's first female copyboy. She went on to become a picture editor, occasional feature writer and sometime cartoonist. When she graduated from Arizona State University in 1979 with a BA in journalism, she became a sixth-generation journalist.
After graduation, Jenny moved to California and landed a job at the Pasadena Star-News by posing as an accomplished artist. In addition to being a one-person art department, Jenny also wrote a weekly local column, covered myriad features and worked the Friday night police beat.
In 1985, while working at The Orange County Register as a general assignment entertainment writer, Jenny kept doodling and ended up drawing a weekly cartoon in the Friday entertainment supplement. The cartooning bug had bitten her. She felt as though she was the only writer in the building who secretly longed to win a Caldecott Award rather than a Pulitzer. At age 32, Jenny moved to Philadelphia to live with a friend and start her new career as a cartoonist.
She made $3,000 her first year.
Gradually, her work picked up and she found her niche as a children's illustrator. Today, Jenny runs a thriving cartooning business in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with 12 children's books to her credit and a list of clients including the textbook arms of most major publishers and Highlights for Children magazine.
Jenny lives in Ohio in an 1880s farmhouse with three dogs and a cat, and when she's not up all night drawing cartoons, she's on her bicycle or on a tennis court. She dedicates her work to her late father, who had a deep and abiding love of cartoons and cartoonists.
Check out Jenny's work, Flo & Friends.
