Did you know that Ghosts Don’t Eat Potato Chips, Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots and Mummies Don’t Coach Softball? You would if you’d read the Adventures of the Bailey School Kids books, which include each of those titles. The 80-plus volume series, by Marcia Thornton Jones and Debbie Dadey, was published in the 1990s. Each volume follows a group of elementary students who try to determine whether an adult they encounter is actually a supernatural being. And each one shares the same illustrator: Brattleboro’s John Steven Gurney. His enticing book covers pull in early readers with rich colors and vivid expressions. Bailey School Kids is just one of several series Gurney has helped readers visualize. Others include A to Z Mysteries and Calendar Mysteries. He’s illustrated more than 150 chapter books, and his artwork can be found on board games, puzzles and a shopping bag for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Gurney also writes and draws his own stories, including the picture book Dinosaur Train and, more recently, the Fuzzy Baseball middle-grade graphic novel series, in which his self-described “weird and wacky humor” is on full display. The books follow a team of bat-swinging, base-running animals called the Fernwood Valley Fuzzies as they take on one goofy opponent after another, including, in the recently released fifth volume, Baseballoween, a team of monsterlike animals called the Graveyard Ghastlies. Gurney grew up in Bucks County, Pa., received a bachelor’s of fine arts in illustration at Pratt Institute in New York and later a master’s at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He honed his skills by spending his college summers drawing caricatures on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, N.J. Twenty-six years ago, he left Brooklyn and moved to Vermont with his wife, Kathie, now a pre-K teacher, and their two children. Gurney has visited dozens of schools to talk with kids about his work over the years, covering more than 30 states and six countries, including Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Poland. When he isn’t busy writing and illustrating kids’ books, Gurney teaches illustration, drawing and visual storytelling at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. Kids VT caught up with him at home in Vermont to find out what it takes to be a professional artist and how he convinces kids to keep reading. KIDS VT: How did your career as a children’s book illustrator get started? JOHN STEVEN GURNEY: It…