As much as I'd like to meet the tooth fairy on an evening walk, I don't really believe it can happen.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.

The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what's fascinating to me

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

I pore over every word on the cereal box at breakfast, often more than once. You can ask me anything about shredded wheat.

its not bad to be different. Sometimes it's the mark of being very very talented.

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.