If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.

All of the life-changing awesome words and pictures and ideas inside your library are useless without just one word outside your library: Open.

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. There are all kinds of really powerful things in that moment, which is what makes story work. Part of Laurie's Keller personality is this ability to revise, to come back and to look at things from a different angle. I don't want to tell stories too much out of school, but Laurie Keller is the only person who sent me a card on my birthday and then sent me a revision.

If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.

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.

Kids are super-independent. This is the time when you don't need your parents for a story anymore. You have a great degree of agency and independence.

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