My name is Eric Rohmann. I am a writer and an illustrator of children’s books. I guess what I always say I do is I tell stories with words and pictures and the book form. I write for kids, so I tend to write about things that are a little bit more universal, experiences that we all have.
They don’t always start that way, but they usually end that way. I tend to write books that have animals in them, not just because I find it more compelling to make pictures of animals — I worked in a zoo, wanted to be a veterinarian — all that stuff, but also with a hippo you can make him anybody. You can make a hippo an old person, you can make a hippo a Native American, you can make a hippo a little sister or an older sister. It’s a more malleable universal figure that you can use in your story telling. And you know what, hippos are funnier than a picture of my brother.
