Certain Peer Pressures Encourage Little Fingers To

Some People May Contend That There Is No Image More Charming That A Child Holding A Puppy Or Kitten. But For Me That's A Distant Second. When I See A Child Clutching A Book... To His Or Her Tiny Bosom, I'm Moved. Children Can Possess A Book In A Way They Can Never Possess A Video Game, A Tv Show, Or A Darth Vader Doll. A Book Comes Alive When They Read It. They Give It Life Themselves By Understanding It.

At One Time, Most Of My Friends Could Hear The Bell, But As Years Passed, It Fell Silent For All Of Them. Even Sarah Found One Christmas That She Could No Longer Hear Its Sweet Sound. Though I've Grown Old, The Bell Still Rings For Me, As It Does For All Who Truly Believe.

Santa Is Our Culture's Only Mythic Figure Truly Believed In By A Large Percentage Of The Population. It's A Fact That Most Of The True Believers Are Under Eight Years Old, And That's A Pity.

At First, I See Pictures Of A Story In My Mind. Then Creating The Story Comes From Asking Questions Of Myself. I Guess You Might Call It The 'what If - What Then' Approach To Writing And Illustration.

The Polar Express Was The Easiest Of My Picture Book Manuscripts To Write... Once I Realized The Train Was Going To The North Pole, Finding The Story Seemed Less Like A Creative Effort Than An Act Of Recollection. I Felt, Like The Storys Narrator, That I Was Remembering Something, Not Making It Up.