Kids Don't Know About Best Sellers. They

Peter Rabbit, For All Its Gentle Tininess, Loudly Proclaims That No Story Is Worth The Writing, No Picture Worth The Making, If It Is Not A Work Of Imagination.

Then One Day My Sister Abandoned Me At The 1939 World's Fair, And That Incident Is The Essence Of In The Night Kitchen. I Was Standing There With Hundreds Of Other People Waving Back At The Little Midgets Dressed Like Bakers When I Turned Around And My Sister Was Gone! The Next Thing I Know I'm Screaming And Crying And Policemen Are Taking Me To A Big Place With Tons Of Kids Who Had All Been Abandoned Like Me. At Least I Was Old Enough To Give Them A Name And An Address.

All I Liked To Do When I Was A Kid Was Draw. My Childhood Was Like My Adult Life: Drawing Pictures With My Brother, Putting The Comics Up On The Glass Window, And Tracing The Characters Onto Tracing Paper Or Drawing Paper And Then Coloring Them. That And Making Things Was All We Ever Did.

And It Is Through Fantasy That Children Achieve Catharsis. It Is The Best Means They Have For Taming Wild Things.

It Was A Very Difficult Time. I Was Working On [umble-ardy] When My Partner And Friend Was Dying Of Cancer. We Set Up A Room In The House To Be Like A Hospital Room. Eugene Died, And Then I Had Bypass Surgery. I Was Doing The Book To Stay Sane While All This Was Going On.