So I would like to say I’m working on one project at a time because I would advocate the importance of that, however I can’t resist. I’m sort of like a kid in a candy store. So I’m simultaneously working on a sequel to When Life Gives you O.J., which is The Continuing Adventures of Zelly Fried and Her Grandfather Ace. And I’m also working on a handful of picture books.
Picture books for me are like popcorn, I just can’t stop, so I start one and I pickup another one and I have another one that I’m kind of chewing on and I put one aside and then I grab another one and I love popcorn and I love picture books.
I think that’s incredibly important I think that the one thing I always want to do is pull back and make any language that I’m putting in the book there for a reason. Less is more, absolutely in picture books. But I think there’s a beauty to that, I think there’s a real opportunity to choose your words carefully and to have the power of a word or the absence of a word sometimes. There’s a picture spread in Chicken Butt with no words.
And it conveys as much as any of the pages in which my words appear because it’s a moment in which nothing is being said, the images are telling the story. So I think authors can do a great deal to choose their words carefully and create just beautiful poems with their words but also to trust the illustrator to carry when they step back. It’s sort of like a dance as I see it.
