Children’s author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka had built quite a name for himself up through 2017, penning over 30 books that covered a range of subjects with humor and warmth.
But the Florence writer upped his game another notch last fall when he published “Hey, Kiddo,” a graphic memoir of his childhood in which he described growing up in a family that grappled with substance abuse. “Hey, Kiddo” — his first book for young adult readers — made him a finalist for a National Book Award.
Now Krosoczka has reached an even wider audience via the web: His illustration of a late pioneer in addiction treatment, Dr. Herbert Kleber, was Tuesday’s “Google Doodle,” the unique illustration that the internet giant sometimes uses in place of its logo on its homepage to celebrate special dates, achievements and historical figures.
Krosoczka’s drawing of Dr. Kleber, in which the U.S. psychiatrist sits in a chair, notebook in hand, as he listens to a dark-haired woman whose face can only partly be seen, has a clear link to the style of illustrations the artist used in “Hey, Kiddo.”
In fact, his first alert that the drawing was out in public came Monday evening when a friend in Ireland reported seeing it on Google and contacted him through Facebook to wonder “if someone was ripping me off, copying my style,” Krosoczka said in a phone call from his home.
“I’d been waiting quite a while for it to launch, and you know, you’re pretty much sworn to secrecy about these things, so I couldn’t say anything,” he said with a laugh. “But then I started hearing from a bunch of people, including some I hadn’t heard from in years, so I knew it was out there.”
For Krosoczka, it’s a thrill to think of his illustration being viewed by people all over the world. But he says it’s also an honor to have the drawing associated with Dr. Kleber, who died last year at age 84 but is remembered for his far-thinking and compassionate approach to treating substance abuse.
“I didn’t know anything about him, but when I began learning about his work, I realized how important it had been,” said Krososzka, whose late mother, Leslie, battled problems with heroin much of her life — a central part of the narrative of “Hey, Kiddo.”
“I lived that, so to be part of an effort to honor someone who gave so much to help [substance abusers], that feels really profound,” he said.
Kleber, born in 1934, volunteered for the United States Public Health Service in 1964 and was stationed at a prison hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where he developed a new method to treat patients battling addiction.
As Google puts it, Kleber “viewed addiction as a medical condition as opposed to a moral failure. Rather than punishing or shaming patients … [he] stressed the importance of research, helping to keep many patients on the road to recovery and avoid relapse through the careful use of medication and therapeutic communities.”
Krosoczka’s illustration comes on the 23rd anniversary of Dr. Kleber being elected to the National Academy of Medicine. The homepage includes links for a number of resources for dealing with substance abuse.
Krosoczka says Google contacted him in August about doing a Doodle, and he subsequently produced half a dozen sketches for the company; after some back and forth with Google on the drawings, he fine-tuned the illustration that appeared Tuesday.
The Florence artist also wrote a short essay for Tuesday’s Google Doodle about why he contributed the illustration of Dr. Kleber. He briefly explains his mother’s battle with addiction (and includes a few strips from “Hey, Kiddo” as well) and writes that Kleber has helped give him a better understanding of his own family history.
“His pioneering work on understanding and treating addiction brought the scientific community to the understanding that drug addictions are physiological shortcomings, and not moral ones,” Krosoczka writes. “I’m grateful for Dr. Kleber’s work, because it has certainly helped me better understand my mother’s plight…. My mother wasn’t the antagonist in the story of my life. The drugs were.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.