‘Froggy’ writer’s many muses

Author Jonathan London writes children’s books, most notably the series of Froggy books. (Christopher Chung/PD)

Sitting on his sunny back porch in Graton, Jonathan London reaches into a pocket and unwads a piece of newspaper he’s scribbled on. Barely legible, across the movie ads it reads: “Just Right … dog/ladder … 2 dogs/sunset.”

It’s a rare glimpse into the creative process of the best-selling children’s-book author: “My wife and I were walking along the cliffs in Sea Ranch with our dog on a leash and she’s small. These other people were coming in the opposite direction with a lot of tall dogs. Toto would arch up, trying to sniff them, and they would bend down to sniff her. But she couldn’t really sniff them back because she was too short. So I just said to Maureen, ‘She needs a dog ladder.’ That’s how it works. Bingo. That’s an idea. There will be a dog who carries a ladder around to sniff the other dogs and then finally finds another dog who is ‘Just Right’ — just the right size. She’ll leave the ladder behind and they’ll walk off into the sunset.”

Then again, “Who knows, it may become nothing at all,” he says with a wink and a smile to his muse.

It’s the same random, unexplainable process that has inspired his more than 100 children’s books, including the hugely popular “Froggy” series that has sold nearly 20 million copies and been translated into seven languages.

Wearing a purple T-shirt emblazoned with a giant green tree frog wearing headphones, London is sitting at the back porch table where he often writes on his laptop. He and his wife Maureen, who works as a nurse, have lived in Sonoma County for 34 years. This is where they raised two sons, Aaron and Sean, who are now in their 20s, living in San Francisco and Southern California while making a go of it as chef and animator.

At 65, London hasn’t always led a life of long dog walks and whimsical day-dream scenarios for picture books. He’s been a minimum-wage day laborer, doing everything from roofing to digging ditches. He’s been a dancer who stumbled upon a modern dance troupe rehearsing one day in Golden Gate Park.

“I saw people dancing and, being a hippie, I just started dancing with them,” he remembers.

Carlos Carvahal, director of San Francisco Dance Spectrum, asked him to join the company. A natural athlete who competed as a swimmer against a young Mark Spitz in high school, London danced with Carvahal for two years.

He spent his first 14 years living all over the country. Born at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital in 1947 as a Navy brat in a family of four, he lived in New Jersey, Minnesota, Virginia and Puerto Rico before his father, an anti-submarine warfare specialist, radio operator and commissary director, retired in San Jose in the early 1960s. Jonathan graduated from Willow Glen High School in San Jose and got his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in social sciences at San Jose State University.

Among other odd jobs, he worked for 12 years setting up and breaking down conventions and trade shows at Moscone Center in San Francisco. When he wasn’t working, he criss-crossed the country five times as a hitchhiker, meeting his wife Maureen along the way at a train station in Calgary, Canada.