After a little break from making picture books, I’m back with Fred Gets Dressed, my most personal book to date. If you have a few minutes, I’d like to tell you about the story, and about the inspiration behind it. One day, when I was five years old, I went into my parents’ bedroom and began looking through my mother’s makeup. I loved my mom, and I loved making art, so it was only natural that I was curious about the “paint” she put on her face.  I didn’t know what to do with makeup, of course, and when my… 

In 2016 I published my first children’s novel, The Wild Robot. It’s the story of a robot named Roz and her struggle to survive on a remote, wild island. As it turns out, Roz doesn’t just survive, she adapts, and learns to communicate with the wildlife, and then she develops animal friends and even a family. Roz makes the island her home. But that wasn’t the whole story. You see, from the moment I started dreaming up The Wild Robot, I was also dreaming up the sequel. It would be another survival story, only this time Roz would have to… 

So, I wrote my first children’s novel. It wasn’t a graceful process, but I survived the stress and the solitude and the crippling self-doubt, and now my novel has entered the world. It’s called The Wild Robot. If you have a few minutes I’d like to tell you about it. Back in 2008, while working on a picture book called The Curious Garden, I spent a lot of time making sketches like this- I loved imagining scenes of nature living in surprising places. And that got me thinking about scenes of unnatural things living in surprising places, and I made… 

I really love teachers. My mom and aunt and grandmother were teachers. Many of my friends are teachers. And I’ve had dozens of truly remarkable teachers throughout my life. So it might seem strange that I’d celebrate teachers with a children’s book about a monster teacher. But that’s what I did. Let me explain. One of the best things that ever happened to me was a surprising act of kindness, from a primary school teacher who I thought was a monster. I was a sensitive little kid at the time, and my teacher was strict, and humorless, and tougher than… 

If you’re familiar with my children’s books you’ve probably noticed that my art style changes from book to book. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1) I get bored, and so I try new things to keep it interesting. 2) I let my illustrations to do most of my storytelling. But I think certain art styles are better suited to tell certain kinds of stories. So I change my art style to better tell each particular story. With that said I want to talk about my inspiration for my picture book Mr. Tiger Goes Wild. The initial idea for the book… 

So I was sitting in my living room this morning, reading some book about Lateral Thinking and sipping my coffee, when my phone rang. The screen on my iPhone told me the call was coming from Seattle, and I remembered that I have dinner plans later this week with Seattle friends who’ll be in town. But then I realized that, in Seattle, it was 6:30am, which would have been a really weird time for my friends to call me. I was confused. I answered the phone and instantly heard the unmistakable din of a room full of giddy librarians. A… 

You probably haven’t noticed that I’m really bad about blogging, because there hasn’t been anything to notice. My excuse for not blogging recently is that I’ve been chin-deep writing and illustrating my newest picture book, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild…which I just finished. HALLELUJAH!!! I was very late with the art for Mr. Tiger, which is a bad habit I’ve gotten into over the last few years. The reason I’ve been late is that I’ve been experimenting with the art style of each of my last few books. I like trying new materials and styles, but it takes time to refine…