I think Laurie's Keller story 'We are growing', resonates because when you have that amount of independence, you're starting to ask yourself questions that the grownups in your life have been answering for you. Before that, you are a good kid, or you are a funny kid, because you're told that's who you are. But when it's just you and the book, you have to figure out who you are.

A book, being a physical object, engenders a certain respect that zipping electrons cannot. Because you cannot turn a book off, because you have to hold it in your hands, because a book sits there, waiting for you, whether you think you want it or not, because of all these things, a book is a friend. It’s not just the content, but the physical being of a book that is there for you always and unconditionally.

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

The difference between children and adults is that they're shorter - not dumber.

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.

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.

I also learn a lot about everybody else's process. People create in different ways, so that has opened me up to different processes and experimenting. Laurie Keller is a character person, so she came to the project with these blades-of-grass characters that we were able to literally grow a story around.