“Lots of people ask me if I’ve got a favorite book. It’s a very hard question to answer, because I think the favorite book is the one, probably, that I’m working on at the moment, because I get so involved with that character.”
“One of my favorite books is Livingstone Mouse. Livingstone Mouse happened because I found a mouse in my mailbox, who had nibbled my mail and made a nest out of this mail. And, in fact, I called for Henry Cole to come around, because I wasn’t going to move her out of the mailbox, and my husband was at work. And he came, and we put her into the woodpile. And then we both began to laugh, because it was the teeniest – she was like this size. And we thought, ‘If she has five babies, how is she going to bring up five babies in that little nest?’”
“And so the idea for Livingstone Mouse then came, because Livingstone Mouse is a mouse who grows too big to live in his mother’s nest, so he has to go and find somewhere else to live. And I think, actually, that’s where stories come from – they come from seeing things around me that happen and ideas start in my head like that.”
I think another one is Dinorella. She’s a very great favorite. And the other one probably, I think, is Honk. Because I always wanted to be a ballerina! And I had flat feet, and I got thrown out of ballet class. So, I never became a ballerina. So, I think I’m living through the ‘swanerina.’
