Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Mike Nawrocki" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Michael Louis Nawrocki (born July 8, 1966) is an American animator, filmmaker, teacher, and voice actor best known as the co-creator of theChristian video series,VeggieTales where he voicedLarry the Cucumber.^[3][4] He voiced many other main characters on the show, includingJerry Gourd,Jean-Claude Pea, and other various characters, is the co-founder ofBig Idea Entertainment alongsidePhil Vischer, and currently serves as the Executive Vice President of the company.^[5] He has directed several of their productions, including the award-winningSilly Songs with Larry segments fromVeggieTales.

Nawrocki originally wanted a career in the medical field, and studied at St. Paul Bible College (nowCrown College) where he met Phil Vischer while serving on a puppet ministry.^[6] Nawrocki later enrolled at theUniversity of Illinois-Chicago, and joined Vischer at GRAFx, Nawrocki helped to finance his education by taking a job with Renaissance Video, a video production facility where he gained experience invideo production and animation and later worked for Post Effects and Film and Tape Works.

Nawrocki graduated from UIC in 1992 with a BS in biology and a BA in history.^{[citation needed]}

In 1993, Nawrocki left Film & Tape Works, a company that had purchased GRAFx Studios, and his future in medicine to join Vischer and founded Big Idea Productions.^[7] After Big Idea's liquidation in 2003, Nawrocki reactivated the company in 2004.^[8]

Throughout the 1990s, Nawrocki has voicedCrackle inRice Krispies commercials alongside Vischer.^{[citation needed]}

On September 30, 2008, Big Idea Entertainment appointed Nawrocki to the position of Executive Vice President.

In 2014,DreamWorks Classics, the parent company of Big Idea, signed an exclusive deal withNetflix to produce and distributeVeggieTales in the House. Nawrocki was signed on to continue voicing most of his characters.^[9]

In 2019, Nawrocki started releasing the Christian children'schapter book seriesThe Dead Sea Squirrels, in which a boy named Michael discovers the petrified remains of Merle and Pearl, a squirrel couple who lived duringJesus' time, near theDead Sea and brings them to America, where they are revived. It was conceptualized in 2016 originally as an animated series. In 2025, an animated series adaptation of the same name was released on Christian children's streaming serviceMinno.^[10][11]

In March 2019, Nawrocki's partnerPhil Vischer announced on his Twitter that he had re-teamed with Nawrocki atTBN to revive theVeggieTales series. Just like previously, Vischer and Nawrocki would return to voice their characters and also work as writers for the new show.^[12]

• Bob Lends a Helping . . . Hand? (2003)ISBN 0-310-70538-X (co-author with Cindy Kenney)
• Peas and Thank You! (2003)ISBN 0-310-70540-1 (writing as the voice of Larry the Cucumber)
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything and Me! (2004) (co-author with Karen Poth)
• The Dead Sea Squirrels (2019–present) (author)^[13]

• Mike Nawrocki atIMDb

• 1966 births
• Living people
• 20th-century evangelicals
• 21st-century evangelicals
• American animated film directors
• American animated film producers
• American evangelicals
• American male voice actors
• American people of Polish descent
• Crown College (Minnesota) alumni
• American Evangelical writers
• Male actors from Dayton, Ohio
• University of Illinois alumni
• Writers from Dayton, Ohio
• Animators from Ohio

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• BLP articles lacking sources from March 2013
• All BLP articles lacking sources
• Articles with hCards
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from March 2023
• Articles with unsourced statements from March 2025