Well, I wrote three Toys books, which were all chapter books. And for the third book the illustrator, Paul Zelinsky, and I went on tour. And I hadn’t been on tour for the second book for various personal reasons so this was the first time I had really been out on the road, you know, since the series had been out for such a long time. And one thing that we noticed was that there were quite a lot of kids who came to the bookstore events who were three and four years old.
And we had thought about this is a book for second, third, fourth-graders, and when we went to schools, that was totally true, but at these bookstores there were little kids holding stuffed buffalos and stuffed stingrays and we realized that the book was a read‑aloud for bedtime a lot of times for pretty young kids, and that is where we got the idea to make a picture book for those guys that might be just more visual, more age-appropriate for really little guys and then they might be interested in the Toys chapter books, you know, after having met these characters.
So, the challenge was to write a picture book not for people who already knew the toys, but for people who would be meeting them for the first time, the youngest readers. And but I’d already written three long books about these guys so I knew them really well and it was hard to figure out what parts of their personalities to bring out in the short space of a picture book.
And Stingray, for example, is a big know-it-all, and she often tells long untrue stories about stuff that she knows all about because she is insecure and she really wants to be important. In Toys Meet Snow Stingray does say outrageous things about the world, but there wasn’t enough room to explain all of the complicated things that go on with Stingray’s personality.
So I just chose that aspect of Stingray that gives an answer that is kind of a little bit magical and fantastical. So, when Lumphy says, “What is snow?” she says, “It’s tiny ballerinas,” and she becomes the poet in this book. And the more know-it-all liar parts of her personality are not really in evidence.
And Plastic is the reader and has always been the reader in the book — in the books. But in the chapter book she’s also the optimist and the bringer together of people. She’s also sometimes an avoider of difficult conversations. In this book I focus on her being the reader. So she’s the person who has read about snow. So she says it’s tiny frozen water, not tiny ballerinas. And I had to choose elements of their personalities only for this short book.
In Toys Meet Snow Stingray, Lumphy, and Plastic decide to go out into the snow for the first time. “Let’s go out,” says Lumphy. “I’m curious.” “Yes,” says Stingray. “It’s beautiful.” “Snow, snow, snow,” says Plastic, bouncing. “I’ve read about it, but I’ve never touched it.”
“I need a hat,” says Lumphy. He is often cold. “I need a plastic baggie,” says Stingray. She is dry‑clean only. “Poke me some air holes.” “I don’t need anything,” shouts Plastic. S”he just goes natural. And so with no small amount of effort, the toys go out into the snow.”
They have all kinds of adventures in the snow involving sledding, snow angels, icicles, and a lot of philosophical arguments about the nature of snow and what it symbolizes and what it is scientifically.