But I don’t draw and paint by hand nearly as much as in the olden days, and I miss that a lot.
You learn so much and improve so much simply by doing things yourself. (Though my skills have certainly improved! I've said that I finally learned to draw about twenty years into my career I’m not really kidding.) Logistically speaking, things are much better now that the computer has put all the typesetting and layout and art separations into my hands. How, if at all, has your approach to working on children’s books changed since you started?Ĭreatively, it really hasn’t. Publishers aren’t shy about telling you when something is selling well. When did you first realize your books had become a hit with children? I suppose I figured that if I kept choosing to do things that I enjoyed, alongside people I like, then I’d always be doing something I enjoyed with people I like. I didn’t really expect anything in particular. (Fittingly, it was Sendak who had brilliantly illustrated Little Bear, the magical book that had made four-year-old me absolutely determined to read.)Īt that time, did you expect working on children’s books to be your main career path?
Then later, as an undergrad, I took a terrific seminar from the breathtaking and strategically curmudgeonly Maurice Sendak. I bought two shares of AT&T stock with it, under the misconception that it was IBM IBM. My first published work came out of that: when I was 15, the Philadelphia Bulletin gave a full color page to a bestiary I'd created. Children’s books were always part of my landscape the remarkable Quaker School I went to from kindergarten through 12th grade, Germantown Friends, had a great library and a strong and lively art program, and every year of high school, we had an assignment to create a book.
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