My favorite book is my next one. I’m always hoping to make my next book my best one.

An artist is waiting for the audience to understand the work. A craftsman is working to understand the audience.

I've been lucky enough to have made enough of these types of children's books that while I don't necessarily know what works, I know what doesn't work. I've got a sense of the rhythm and the form. With this series, I get to play with ideas that I would never have myself.

Elephant and Piggie could just Google themselves! With the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series, we're picking artists who have a voice already. They have a sensibility. I don't want to make a book about blades of grass. That doesn't interest me. I want to make a book that Laurie Keller uses to express herself in this format. That's the key. That's what's going to keep it individual.

When you make a decision, you don't have to be locked into it. One of the ways that you grow is by starting over.

The common thread of the series is that these are the books that Elephant and Piggie like to read. Elephant and Piggie are retired, so this is what they do in their spare time. What will they end up wanting to read? Time will tell. We've got to let that evolution happen as the series goes on. Any return of a character would have to be organic, would have to be, for example, Laurie Keller saying, hey, I really want to do this, and me feeling that there's a story there, rather than just saying, yeah, we can get three books out of these characters.

Writing for children is as easy as describing the history of the Byzantium in three words.