I’m not as prolific a writer as I am an illustrator, but when I write my own stories, it happens the same way. Pictures come into my head, and the pictures dictate the words, rather than the other way around. And when I’m illustrating a story by another author, of course, the author’s words put the pictures in my head. So, it’s all the same process. It just gets jumbled around a little bit, whether or not you do pictures first or the words first. When I write, it’s actually a combination of the two. I usually do some drawings first to get my word thoughts going. And then I put the words to it.
Most of the stories that I write come out of experiences that I’ve had with my husband Ted we’ve traveled all over the world. We usually go to places where there’s wildlife, because that’s our main interest. And so What’s the Matter, Habibi? is a story about a camel and a camel driver. That came from my experiences with camels and camel drivers in Morocco and Egypt. And a book called Chubbo’s Pool is about a selfish hippopotamus that won’t share his pool with anybody else, and that was a real hippopotamus that lived in the river outside a camp we stayed at in Africa, who would not share his pool with any of the other animals, and he wouldn’t share it with us, either. And so that’s where my stories usually come from.
Cat Count and Animal Snackers came out of the blue. Like Doreen says, “click, clack, moo,” were just three words that popped into her head. I am really inarticulate when it comes to talking about where this ability comes from or where these ideas come from. I truly believe it is simply the way you’re wired. You don’t have any choice it’s not up to you. You just do it, because it’s what you do. I think most artists and writers would agree with me on that.
