I don't want to make myself sound that spontaneous, because I'm not.

In some ways I'm very structured.

The morning time is also a time when I look at what I did yesterday. That's often a jumping-off point for today.

I don't think about it that much, but sometimes I am surprised by that. I sometimes wonder why I didn't turn out to be the kind of picture-book writer who has stuffed animals that go with their books. That would be okay with me.

Often they do go back and forth the whole way, and I don't know until the very end what the last line of the book is going to be. That was true here - the very last line of the book was the last thing that happened.

There will be scenes in a movie where people are walking through the park, or through a forest, and you're seeing the flickering leaves around them, and they're walking, but you're also hearing their words. It's an interaction between where they are and what they're saying that's both visual and verbal.

I remember when I was working on All Alone in the Universe, and Robin Roy was my editor. When I first sent it to her, she said kids this age don't want pictures in their books.