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

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

I think we're conditioned by watching movies.

It would look like a notebook with dividers, and there'd be different subjects and things [preschoolers] could do, so that they could feel like they were going to school also.

I love when I'm trying to do something I don't know how to do, and it kind of figures itself out along the way. And that means messing up a lot. That means throwing away a lot of drawings.

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.