So that when you come to read the actual Bible you have a lay of the land. And you come to the Bible knowing that it's not mostly a book about you and what you're supposed to be doing. It's most of all a story. It's this wonderful love story - about a God who loves his children with a wonderful, never-stopping-never-giving-up-unbreaking-always-and-forever love.

In a successful picture book, you always want the voice of the text to match the voice of the art; so that it seems as if the same person writing is the one illustrating and vice versa.

When you lose the story that's running like a golden stream underneath all the other stories, you're left with the idea that the Bible is a collection of random-seeming stories about various Bible characters that we're supposed to learn lessons from - almost like an Aesop's Fables. And a book of rules that God wants us to keep so he will love us. And we lose the glorious truth of the Bible that we were loved before even the beginning of time. That God had a plan. That no matter what, he would never stop loving us.

So that when you come to read the actual Bible you have a lay of the land. And you come to the Bible knowing that it's not mostly a book about you and what you're supposed to be doing. It's most of all a story. It's this wonderful love story - about a God who loves his children with a wonderful, never-stopping-never-giving-up-unbreaking-always-and-forever love.

If you write for children with respect and treat them with dignity - you'll capture the adults as well. Children deserve nothing but our very best. Nothing but excellence will do for the young, because the responsibility is greater. We write up for children, never down.

A picture book is a story told in two languages - word and image. And the illustration is the front door of the book.

When we're about telling the best possible story, making the best possible book - we're thinking about the reader, rather than about our egos. And then we serve the story. Not the other way 'round.