A book is something that young readers can experience on their own time. They decide when to turn the page. They'll put their arm right on the page so you can't turn it because they're not ready to go to the next page yet. They just want to look at it again, or they want to read the book over and over because they really enjoy setting the pace themselves.

Of all people, children are the ones that really understand when there's a truth there for them - an emotional truth. The characters really have to work. Children, as an audience, are very inspirational for me.

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.

A children's book is the perfect place where young readers can understand the world because they can take a deep breath and look at it and imagine and contemplate while they're looking at.

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.

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.

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.