So, I saw this boy chasing this dog, and then I started to interrogate myself: “Who’s the boy?” “Who’s the dog?” “Whose garden is this?” And in the process of that interrogation, a story revealed itself, and the story was basically about the boy losing the dog, the boy confronting the magician who owns the garden, and the boy then confronting a perplexing problem for children, which is: Is magic real? Namely, does somebody really have the power to do Merlin-like things? Or is magic just a trick – something that somebody can fool you into believing? The boy is confronted with that by his interaction with the magician.
I didn’t realize that’s what I was writing about when I was writing, but I was just trying to keep the story going and make it interesting and leave a little mystery at the end, because I love mysteries – especially the ones that are unsolved…
So Houghton-Mifflin published the book, and I thought that the greatest benefit from being a published author might be the opportunity to buy large numbers of remaindered books at a low price. And I would have Christmas presents and birthday presents to give to people for years to come. But much to my surprise, my publisher started sending reviews to me – book reviews…
So I was getting a lot of these reviews, and flabbergasted to see these reviews were sometimes in national media. I mean reviews in Time magazine and reviews in Newsweek magazine and The New York Times. I said, “Well, gosh, this is different. This isn’t the same as being a sculptor in New York City, slaving away for the tiniest bit of recognition.” So, that was a surprise to me.
And then, of course, as I said, also surprising was that they were, for the most part, filled with praise. My publisher was very excited. And then that first title got the a Caldecott honor book award…
It was the first one I ever did. Literally, there was a picture in The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. It’s not the boy on the cover. I think it may be the first picture in the book, where Miss Hester is leaving. That, I think, is the first picture I did for the book. But I think that was probably the eighth or ninth drawing – and by “drawing,” I mean an illustration – that I ever did in my life. And I thought, “Well, if I could do something this well with so little experience in the art form, I should try it again, because I could probably do something better.”
