He has won two Caldecott Medals for U.S. picture book illustration, for Jumanji (1981) and The Polar Express (1985), both of which he also wrote; both were later adapted as successful motion pictures. He was also a Caldecott runner-up in 1980 for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.

illustrator

I use charcoal pencils. I use colored pencils, pastels. I use a little watercolor sometimes. I use pen and ink, and I use something a little different for each book because that way it is always interesting for me to make the pictures.

children’s sense of wonder

Lisa, who used picture books when teaching her 3rd grade students, encouraged Chris to consider making illustrations for a story book. A friend of Lisa’s, illustrator and author David Macaulay agreed with Lisa that the kind of pictures Chris was making could be effective book illustration.

In The Polar Express the problem is that the little boy loses the first gift of Christmas, a silver bell. This problem is solved when Santa finds the bell in his sleigh and gives it back to the little boy on Christmas morning.

The reason for this, apparently, is due to a phenomenon called Uncanny Valley – which is when non-human objects which look akin to human beings prompt feelings of eeriness and disgust, due to their similarities, and yet their simultaneous differences.

Before Hero Boy boards the Polar Express, the clock says 11:55. The time doesn’t change until the first gift of Christmas is given, near the end of the film. This is a reference to Back to The Future and can possibly mean the the Polar Express is a functioning time machine.

Billy’s ticket gets punched for the return trip. When he first looks at it, it reads, “DEPEND ON”, but it changes to “RELY ON” and “COUNT ON” after each time he flips it.

Two actors lent their vocal talents to the Hero Boy—Tom Hanks, who plays the character as the adult narrator, and Spy Kids star Daryl Sabara, who voices him as a child. There was a third actor who’s not listed in the voice credits but who still played a big part in making the Hero Boy feel real.

He is determined to get to the North Pole on time and usually finds Hero Boy at the heart of every problem. He was both portrayed in motion capture and voiced by Tom Hanks who also voiced Woody from the Toy Story franchise….

When the hero boy rides the Polar Express, the conductor has the same voice as the adult version of the boy.

Billy lives close by Hero Boy at 11344 Edbrooke Avenue in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Billy’s family lives in poverty, as depicted in the film. His house is described as being “on the wrong side of the tracks” to the other children’s houses and his appearance is much simpler and poorer than his friends.

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They added: “And the train in Polar Express is powered by a Flux Capacitor as shown in one scene.” It’s true, Zemeckis added the mechanism that makes time travel possible as an Easter Egg during an engine room scene aboard the Christmas train.

Back to the Future is an American science fiction comedy franchise written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, directed by Zemeckis and produced by Gale and Neil Canton for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, and distributed by Universal Pictures.

When Hanks and Zemeckis took “Polar Express” to Universal Pictures, where there was a deal with Castle Rock Entertainment, the film’s producers, the studio was unenthusiastic about making a movie for which the two men would get not only $40 million in salary but 35% of the first-dollar gross — 20% to Hanks, 15% to …