Some people have said to me, “Why did you do a book on dragons, Behold
the Dragons?” “Why did you do a book on unicorns? That’s not nonfiction.”
What happened was I did a book called Knights in Shining Armor for Little, Brown a few years ago. I was talking at a school, and a little boy came up to me and said, “When are you going to do a book about dragons?”
I said, “Did you see a dragon on your way to school today?”
He said, “No.” And he said, “Will you do a book on dragons? I love dragons.”
And I said, “Well, I’m not sure if I’ll do a book on dragons, because are dragons real?”
And he said, “No.”
Well, I started looking into reference material on the history of dragons, and thousands of years ago all around the world, all these different civilizations were telling stories and writing stories, and legends were handed down from generation to generation about dragons. Then I thought, “This is really curious. This is more than fiction. This is a sociological thing going on here.”
So, I started learning all these different stories about dragons
then, all of a sudden, I was doing a book on unicorns. And I’ll be doing a book on fairies, because for thousands of years, all these different cultures have been talking about these little creatures, these little fairies. So, it’s like a little series that has developed. So, that’s why, like I said, I split off into many different directions.