It's one of my favorite times of day. I'll have an array of notes, things that I want to think about. Something will start to take shape, and I'll play around with it. It's not usually an intense time. It's sort of a playful time. But it's when some really good thoughts arise.

I creep over to my chair and sit there with my notebook and my thermos of coffee. It's my best time for thinking, because I haven't started thinking about anything else yet, and the thoughts can kind of go in and out of my head.

I'm German, after all.

Some of it just involved thinking about, for example, the different kinds of science, what chemistry is.

I'm heavily influenced by Edward Ardizzone, how he has people talking in little speech bubbles. I love those. And also Edward Gorey. Those are two of my favorite people.

A long time ago, I had an idea to make a book for preschoolers who had older siblings who were going to school.

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.