He first used his trademark cut paper collage technique on a series of book covers for Frommer’s travel guides. But reading to his children opened up the world of children’s books. “Because of my design training is was not totally absurd to think about making a book myself.” “Although I’ve always been interested in drawing,” says Jenkins, “I’ve never been particularly good at it.”

Using his design skills in composition and color, Jenkins frequents a store in New York City where he chooses handmade papers from all over the world for his illustrations. “The paper can do a lot of the work that would have to be expressed in some other way with brush strokes or pencil shading,” he says. “It’s the nature of the paper.” Jenkins’s hard and fast rule is to let the paper do the work; he never embellishes his illustrations with any other media. He cuts his paper shapes (and the accompanying adhesive backing) with X-Acto knives, using between 200 and 300 blades per book.

Drawing on his lifelong interest in science, Jenkins creates picture books about the natural world. Biggest, Strongest, Fastest grew out of the questions his son asked about animals. Caldecott Honor book, What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? (with Robin Page), examines a variety of animal tails and their functions. A bronze cast of a gorilla hand at the San Diego Zoo inspired Actual Size. The idea for Looking Down came to Jenkins while on an airplane with his daughter. As she looked out the window at the tiny houses and cars, he realized she had no concept of the way distance influences what we see. He is proudest of Life on Earth, an ambitious book explaining evolutionary theory in terms a seven year old can grasp.

In 1994, he moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he works in a studio attached to his house, which was built in the 1880s and often functions as if it was still the 19th century. He and his wife Robin have 3 children.