James Rallison

Chandler, Arizona produced the cartoonist behind TheOdd1sOut. James Rallison was born there in 1996 and began posting his marshmallow-shaped figures to Tumblr at sixteen, in June 2012. An animated version of the comic went up on YouTube in 2014 and grew into an audience in the tens of millions. The Odd 1s Out: How to Be Cool and Other Things I Definitely Learned from Growing Up, published in 2018, was his first book: illustrated short chapters about art class beside his more gifted twin sister Faith, the middle school locker room, the single year of college he quit, and the general business of being the awkward one in the room. A second collection, The First Sequel, followed in 2020. His mother, Janette Rallison, writes novels for young readers.