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.

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

I'm not a perfectionist. I'm just very observant.

If you don't know where you're going, stop racing to get there. -- from Just Desert by M. T. Anderson

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

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.

The Polar Express began with the idea of a train standing alone in the woods. I asked myself, What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go?