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.

I do like to be surprised.

With most of my books, there are some parts that pop up right away, and other parts I have to wait for.

Ideas mostly come from the work itself. Often when I'm drawing, the words will be bouncing around in my head, and when I'm writing, ideas about the drawing happen.

I do love that discovery of when you're trying to figure out how to make something work, and it happens in a way that you didn't predict.

We had a dog, Lucky, who was fourteen years old. For the last year of his life, I would take him on these walks that were long but didn't cover much distance.

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