"To me, it kind of had the tone of some of those old Victorian tales of poor orphan children, so I wanted to give it kind of a feeling that was reminiscent of that," he said. "But at the same time I didn't want to make it seem old-fashioned, I wanted to make it seem current and something kids today would relate to, to bring it into the present and create this feeling of it could be anytime, or no time at all, just kind of a strange world of its own."

Helquist said his life in Utah shows up indirectly in his work.

"I didn't think back on my life in Orem as I was doing these illustrations, but I draw mostly from my imagination, so everything in my life somehow creeps in there, people I've known over the years," he said. "Sometimes, and I don't do it on purpose, but sometimes after drawing a character I'll see them and it'll remind me of someone that I knew at some point in my life."

Helquist used to spend hours in the Orem Public Library as a kid, which he says nurtured his love for telling stories through pictures.

"I wasn't a big reader as a child, but I loved books, and I loved to look at pictures, so I used to just pore through books, so I'm sure some of that has stuck with me and influenced the way my art ends up looking," he said.

Helquist started out as an engineering major at BYU but switched to illustration halfway through his college career. He graduated from BYU 11 years ago with a bachelor's of fine arts in illustration and headed to New York for an internship. He's worked there ever since, illustrating on the side — until the Lemony Snicket books came along.

Since then he's had a steady stream of illustration work and has written and illustrated a picture book of his own, "Roger the Jolly Pirate," which was published in April.

Helquist says though he's working on writing another picture book, he plans to keep illustrating for others.

"I consider myself more of an illustrator than a writer," he said.

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E-mail: mdecker@desnews.com