I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.

I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.