His First BookLike every great lasagna, Garfield was born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant on a winter's night in 1978, while outside snow fell like grated Parmesan cheese. He weighed five pounds, six ounces at birth--that's big for a kitten!--and right from the start showed a passion for Italian food. The restaurant owner, forced to choose between Garfield and closing his doors for lack of pasta, sold Garfield to a pet store. Garfield thought he was a goner until Jon Arbuckle walked in the door. The rest is history.Jim Daviswas born on July 28, 1945, in Marion, Indiana. He later attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he distinguished himself by earning one of the lowest cumulative grade point averages in the history of the university. TheGarfieldstrip was born on June 19, 1978, syndicated in forty-one U.S. newspapers. Today it's syndicated in more than 2,100 newspapers worldwide with more than 200 million readers, leading Guinness World Records to nameGarfieldThe Most Widely Syndicated Comic Strip in the World. Davis has had many successes withGarfield,including four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Program and induction into the Licensing Hall of Fame (1998), but his most prized awards are from his peers in the National Cartoonist Society- Best Humor Strip (1981 and 1985), the Elzie Segar Award (1990), and the coveted Reuben Award (1990) for overall excellence in cartooning.
