I’ve written a lot of books now – and once I got started, I couldn’t stop, even though little kids write to me and say, “You’re pretty old now. When are you going to stop?” I don’t think I’ll ever stop.
Mostly, I write picture books, because that’s my favorite genre to write. I love to write picture books, and I love to write picture books for the older child, that can also be read and used by adults and teachers in classrooms. And that has happened for me. I’ve had university professors write to me and say, “I use your book in my classroom.” Some of my picture books are very serious, like The Wall, which is about a father and son going to the Vietnam wall to find the grandfather’s name. And it’s from the heart, and I can’t read it aloud myself without crying, so I don’t ever try to read that one on a podium.
Or, one about the homeless that I wrote called Fly Away Home, about a boy and his father living in the Chicago airport, existing there and nowhere else to go, nowhere to live, no job. At the end of my books, I always try to have not a happy ever after thing, but hope for the future. And in that book, the boy identifies with a bird that is trapped in the airport. The door opens, and the bird flies free, and the boy can identify with that bird and know that some day that will happen for him.
I had an interesting experience with that book in that a boy wrote to me, and he had read that book 30 times. He had been abused by his father, who was now in jail. He wrote to me and said that when they put him in jail, “You know what happened? Then I was free, free, free.” Now he still sends me pictures of himself. I know he’s okay now, because he’s got dyed, yellow, spiky hair, and he plays a trombone. So, I figure he’s made it through.
But children have voted that book their Heal the World Award in their classroom, and that’s a wonderful award to get, more meaningful than a lot of big, important awards that you might get.
Then I do for-fun books for kids, too, like The Mother’s Day Mice and The Valentine Bears and Happy Birthday, Dear Duck — just books for entertainment, because I think there needs to be a balance there for children — although I have to say that I get most of my letters from my serious books, because they seem to touch the children in the way that they’ve touched me when I began to write them.
