The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real.

I love children because that's a part of my life that was so happy, and I like to remember back to those days where everything is a discovery, and the world is so fresh.

A lot of times it's the child that sees something and not the grownup. I love that because, when readers get older, they start looking for the most important ideas in the story. They don't look at things in the same way anymore. Children haven't really learned to do that yet. They take all their great, intellectual skills, look at the full page, and appreciate all of the different things.

I would like teachers to look deep because sometimes kids do have a faade that they put up because they feel vulnerable. Their creative truth may not be ready for their friends to see.

Writing a story is like going down a path in the woods. You follow the path. You don't worry about getting lost. You just go.

I like to pretend that each book is my first one and last one, because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to do a book.

I knew that I wanted to be an illustrator since I was in kindergarten. I can remember the exact day. The art teacher usually came to our classroom once a week, but she was absent that day. Instead, our regular teacher gave us each a huge piece of paper and crayons, and we could do whatever we wanted.