Ross MacDonald has created illustrations and humor pieces for periodicals like Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, Spy and Rolling Stone. He illustrated the recent children's books 7 ATE 9 (by Tara Lazar) and AMERICAN GOTHIC, THE LIFE OF GRANT WOOD by Susan Wood. He collaborated with author Sally Cook on the books HOW TO SPEAK SOCCER, HOW TO SPEAK FOOTBALL, and HOW TO SPEAK GOLF, and with Sally Cook and James Charlton on HOW TO SPEAK BASEBALL. He also wrote and illustrated 4 children’s books, as well as the adult humor books WHAT WOULD JESUS CRAFT? and IN AND OUT WITH DICK AND JANE, with co-author James Victore. Yet all the while he has led a secret double life designing and fabricating props for over 40 movies and television series. He has made everything from the book Bradley Cooper’s character throws out the window in Silver Linings Playbook, to the titular Book of Secrets for the second National Treasure movie, baby’s favorite book in Baby’s Day Out, Nucky Thompson’s checkbook and Arnold Rothstein’s calling card for Boardwalk Empire, the morgue toe-tags in The Knick, the Pawnee town charter for Parks and Recreation, the Red Apple Tobacco tin in Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, and thousands of other props.
Born and raised in the backwoods of Canada, he lived for many years in New York City before finally washing up on the bucolic shores of Connecticut.
