Well, I think with Squish, you know we were looking around for what kind of creature should we have for the star of our new series. We knew we wanted to make another one, and we like working with animals rather than people as our main characters, they’re more fun. And we’re like what’s out there that hasn’t been done? You know, there’s ton of bears and bunnies, and dogs, and cats, but we’re like, microorganisms, no one has done amoebas, no one has done paramecia, or euglenas, or any of these other creatures, like it’s classic.
And really, you know for a lot of kids school is like, it’s a, it’s a battle of survival, with Squish it’s a literal battle of survival, like a bully might actually eat him if things don’t go well. But it just sort of amps things up to that next level. And it’s fun because we can, we always like to have another layer to whatever book we’re doing. With Babymouse it was the ability to have a way to introduce all of this classic literature, and all these, this pop culture, Babymouse the musical, all of these classic musicals that kids might be interested in later.
With Squish we can sort of introduce all of this science content. And not in a really boring teachy, preachy way, just sort of like, just little bits here and there, which is how we learned a lot of stuff. Again I think back to reading Peanuts cartoons by Charles Schultz, you know that’s how I learned about Beethoven, and psychiatry, and things like that, with Lucy’s little psychiatry booth, or Schroeder always playing Beethoven. I never would have come across those words for years otherwise.
