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.

I bet your mom would let me." -Pigeon, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus-

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.

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.

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

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

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.