I Stress Character, Character, Character.

Children Do Live In Fantasy And Reality; They Move Back And Forth Very Easily In A Way We No Longer Remember How To Do.

I Write Books That Seem More Suitable For Children, And That's Ok With Me. They Are A Better Audience And Tougher Critics. Kids Tell You What They Think, Not What They Think They Should Think.

Then One Day My Sister Abandoned Me At The 1939 World's Fair, And That Incident Is The Essence Of In The Night Kitchen. I Was Standing There With Hundreds Of Other People Waving Back At The Little Midgets Dressed Like Bakers When I Turned Around And My Sister Was Gone! The Next Thing I Know I'm Screaming And Crying And Policemen Are Taking Me To A Big Place With Tons Of Kids Who Had All Been Abandoned Like Me. At Least I Was Old Enough To Give Them A Name And An Address.

I Think People Should Be Given A Test Much Like Driver's Tests As To Whether They're Capable Of Being Parents! It's An Art Form. I Talk A Lot. And I Think A Lot. And I Draw A Lot. But Never In A Million Years Would I Have Been A Parent. That's Just Work That's Too Hard.

An Illustrator In My Own Mind - And This Is Not A Truth Of Any Kind - Is Someone Who So Falls In Love With Writing That He Wishes He Had Written It, And The Closest He Can Get To Is Illustrating It. And The Next Thing You Learn, You Have To Find Something Unique In This Book, Which Perhaps Even The Author Was Not Entirely Aware Of. And That's What You Hold On To, And That's What You Add To The Pictures: A Whole Other Story That You Believe In, That You Think Is There.