As an early reader, I was drawn to only the images, and it may have been before I even learned how to read — like three and four years old. And it was the images that sort of led me along and sorta told the story. Like Harold and the Purple Crayon, it was something so awesomely magical about that crayon from page to page. You know, little gestures that Harold did turned that book into a magical book and a magical story. When he made the pies and when he fell in the water and made a boat and made an island to sail to and then he got hungry and made the pies. And then he couldn’t eat any more pies, and he made deer to help, you know, eat the pies. And all these wonderful, little things that went from point A to point B to point C — that was so incredible and magical to me.
And that’s part of what I’ve never forgotten in making children’s books, and that’s what I’m chasing — you know, just that magic in storytelling.
