In 1942, during World War II, Zion joined the army and served in the Anti-aircraft Artillery Visual Training Aids Section.
After the war, Zion landed a job at Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBS) and worked as an art designer from 1944 to 1946.
[2] The couple made friends in the New York media scene, including Hans and Margret Rey, another husband-wife team responsible for the Curious George stories.
Zion remembers that it was Graham's sketch of children gathering apples in an orchard,[3] done several years earlier in Canada, that inspired his first book, All Falling Down (1951).
[7] Critics praised Gene Zion's "charming" texts and his unique talent for envisioning a "story through the eyes of a child."
His books were also notable for their zany humor, especially The Plant Sitter (1959), the plot of which critics called a "happy blend of unanswerable logic and wild improbability.
[9] In The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators, Anita Silvey wrote that "the quirky talents of Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham in Dear Garbage Man (1957) paved the way for New Yorker artists such as William Steig and James Stevenson.