I loved being a child. If I do have a talent, it's not so much being an artist, but it's being able to remember back to that time.

My parents would tell us to go outside and play or to do creative stuff, but television was very limited. So we used our own creativity to entertain ourselves. We were out in the woods a lot making huts and playing horses.

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.

The books take a year just to do the drawing. I will travel to a country to do the research and get ideas. Sometimes I don't travel to do research, but mostly I do. It takes a long time, but do I ever get tired of it? Not really. The characters kind of grow and evolve.

I loved being a child. If I do have a talent, it's not so much being an artist, but it's being able to remember back to that time.

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.

When I was little, I loved books that gave me lots of detail so that I felt like I could be transported to this other place, or, in the case of an illustration, I felt like I could walk into the page.