I want kids to understand that making pictures is similar to making music; there are so many instruments and so many tunes that the possibilities for how you play are truly limitless.

Make it all about the work. Everything else will follow.

Receiving both the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award suggests I have succeeded, at least in terms of my own goals, in my intent to make art that moves children.

I try not to respond with a pep talk, such as, "Everyone has talent, just try, you'll see." I skirt those kinds of answers.

If I were to give myself a pat on the back, it would be for sticking with bookmaking as my primary way of expressing myself over the span of fifty years.

I'm often in conversations with people who have learning disabilities, and they talk about how they were teased and perhaps laughed at sometimes as children. That was never the case with me. Maybe it was something about my personality, my temperament, but I don't ever remember being teased. I remember the awkwardness of leaving class to go to a special class, but that's all.

I have to believe that when I finish a project, that I will not only grow as an artist, but as a person.