Sometime around second or third grade
Sometime in the last decade
I have twenty-one books to my credit including being the illustrator of the successful PUNCTUATION TAKES A VACATION. Some of my other titles include BASIL’S BIRDS, THELONIUS TURKEY LIVES!, BEAR’S BIG BREAKFAST, and BENNY SHARK GOES TO FRIEND SCHOOL.
My books have been published by New York’s finest: HarperCollins, Farrar Straus Giroux, Random House, Holiday House, Disney and Amazon/Two Lions.
I live outside Austin, Texas, and I work in a studio in my backyard.
I’m originally from Indiana. A small Midwestern state full of corn and basketball hoops. When I was a kid, I was a really good basketball player with a nice jump shot. I wanted to be a professional basketball player. But I guess being an author is pretty good, too.
I was in the U.S. Army for two years. Yep, left-right-left-right...I wrote and drew stuff for the newspaper at Fort Polk, Louisiana. I married an officer.
I like to play golf.
I’m not actually very good at it.
But it’s a lot of fun to be outdoors and have friends laugh at my bad shots.
When I was fifty, my son made me go to trapeze school with him.
It was one of the scariest things I've ever done!
Advice for kids:
NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER! I’m not a big believer in “talent.” I think that hard work creates the results many call “talent.”