People think children's books are about teddy bears and little flowers. I realize people sometimes don't know what to do with my books because they say, 'Is it a children's book, and what age group?'
Writing a children's book means you cannot spin out long narratives or have complex character development.
I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
Reading is where the wild things are.
I read a lot of books to my children, and they all seem really good. I think people have gotten really good at children's books.
I guess I never grew up. I was still reading kids' books in high school and college. I was always interested in writing or illustrating children's books, and I started collecting out-of-print books when I was about 10 years old.
I didn't have picture books - there weren't many around when I was a child.
If I give a book as a gift, it is invariably a children's book with beautiful artwork and a simple text. I adore the feel of them, the care taken in the artwork, and the high visual stimulation that sets off the simple but often powerful message the text conveys.
He is a writer for the ages, the ages of four to eight.
I rarely read children's books.
When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the times.
With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.
I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.
Children's literature is as valid an art form as any other.
What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.
The 'Barnaby' books were always intended to be graphic novels.
[My mom] is quite the strict editor. I feel like maybe she has more of the old-school editing style, which really works in picture books, because you don't want to articulate anything in words that is already shown through the pictures.
Reading to small children is a specialty.
With my mother, Julie Andrews Edwards, I've authored such children's books as the 'Dumpy the Dump Truck' series, 'Dragon: Hound of Honor,' 'The Great American Mousical,' 'Simeon's Gift' and 'Thanks to You: Wisdom from Mother and Child.'
Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of (Dr. Seuss's) 'Hop on Pop.'
Most of the books I remember from my childhood were Dr. Seuss-type books. They were fun to read, but there wasn't a real story behind them.
When I was very small, I loved 'Meg And Mog' by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski. I had all the books and remember going to see the theatre production.
My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.
It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.
I hadn't thought specifically about doing graphic novels until a couple of my friends got contracts for them. Then I started picturing how various of my stories or poems would work in an illustrated format and thinking how cool that would be.
