When I came to do these illustrations, I was virtually working day and night and came up with this style of little dots. And that really took lots of time. But then unfortunately because people would see it in The New York Times, they would say, can you do a book like that? So all the first books were made of little dots.
But I was extremely lucky. I think it helps us sometimes in life that we have this inflated idea about ourselves. I thought, oh, I can do children’s books. Children just will love my ideas. But growing up outside of United States, I knew nothing about pizza. I knew nothing about cartoons. I knew nothing about peanut butter and jelly. I didn’t have any sort of connection with childhood, baseball. But I grew up with The Three Musketeers, or Monte Cristo. I just think it was sheer luck that even with that sort of distorted view of what’s appealing to children, I was able in the beginning to do my books.
Everything changed since I have my own children. Because at first when they were born, I thought I have to leave some legacy or some message to them. So I did a book about Prague for Madeleine called Three Golden Keys. I thought, well, she will be wondering what her father was like
And then the same thing when my son was being expected. I did a book about Galileo, because I thought I have to do a book about somebody who was very special and show him that sometimes life can get difficult, like when Galileo has to answer all the questions of the Cardinals.
But then when the kids grew up a little bit, I realized they are not really interested in that at all. And since then, I am trying to sort of observe them and see what they like. So that will go for the little older books I did for my son, which were about fire trucks, which he loved, and bulldozers, and ships and dinosaurs. And for little girls, like Ballerina. Or the whole series I hope of Madlenka when the little girl who lives on the block in the big city meets all these people who are from different countries and different cultures. Because when I grew up in Prague, people really wouldn’t speak to each other because they were just simply afraid to the political regime and climate was terrible.
So now comes another problem, because when I did Madlenka, when I did Ballerina, they were little, so I could observe them, and I didn’t have to ask them for permission or anything. And now of course, they’ve moved on because my time of work takes too long. So Madeleine is now nine and I have six year-old Madlenka and I can see that I cannot keep on going with them, because all of the sudden, I am not going to do a book about Madlenka listening to Britney Spears or something. So in a way, I will have to let them go and stay with some sort of dream of six years.
