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…