I was a very sickly kid and suffered from chronic pneumonia, which is why we moved to the warm southern climate. I think being ill contributed to my development as a writer. I learned early on to entertain myself by reading.
Writing my own stories had always been one of my dreams, but I didn't start until I was 29. I was working in a book warehouse and was assigned to the third floor where all the children's books were. For four and a half years, I spent all day, every day around children's books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with them.
How do I feel when I look back at prior work? Hmmm. I think, 'I tried to do the best I could do. It's not perfect. It will never be perfect.' And then I think, 'I want to try again.'
To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.
I was someone who wanted to be a writer but who wasn't writing. I was someone buying books on writing. I was someone telling people that I was writer. But I was not writing.
Writing at home and then going out into the world to talk about why books matter to me feeds the writing. It's a good mix. It provides balance.
If you sit down and read with your kid, either having your child read to you or you reading to your child at a regular time each day, it deepens the relationship. You don't have to talk about stuff; the story will do that work for you.
I always have a notebook with me, I eavesdrop; I write down what people say. It's very rare that one of those things will provoke a story, but I think that that kind of paying attention all the time, and keeping everything open, lets the stories come in. But where they come from is still a mystery to me.
I was lucky enough to have a mother who took me to the library - the public library - twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And also bought me books. And also read aloud to me.
I was a shy, terrified kid. But I was also a kid who was lucky enough to have friends. I laughed with those friends. I had adventures. We dreamed together. I relied on them.
It's a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.
How do you make your kids read more? It needs to be presented as a joy and a privilege to get to do it, and the kids should get to see you as a parent reading for your own pleasure. It's not something you send your kids off to do, 'Go into your room and read for 15 minutes or else.' It becomes a task then.
I think that sometimes we open our hearts a little more easily to animals than we do to each other.
I find that when I write for children, I am more hopeful, less cynical. I don't use different words or a different sentence structure. I just hope more.
If you read, the world is your oyster. It truly is. Reading makes everything possible.
So much of writing is like walking down a dark hallway with your arms out in front of you. You bump into a lot of things.
Progress is hard to measure in any creative endeavor, I think. It's often a matter of instinct, of feeling your way through what works and what doesn't.
I can never tell if anything I do is really good. I'm always just slightly chagrined.
There's this amplification that happens anytime you tell a story. You let it go out into the world. It's the most beautiful thing. All I can do is look at it in wonder and amazement.
From a cognitive standpoint, I'm very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.
