1. How old are you?

About 170 pounds

2. What is your favorite color?

Polka-dot

3. What is your favorite food?

Anything my wife cooks… and dark chocolate.

4. Do you have any hobbies?

Flyfishing,  guitar, baseball, hiking, and pinball. I also like to read!

5. Do you have any pets?

I have a West Highland terrier named Roy. He’s a complete knucklehead. I wrote ROY DIGS DIRT about him.

Click here to help Roy find critters.

6. Do you have any kids?

I have a daughter named Emma. She’s a writer, too!

7. Where do you get your ideas?

I never know where an idea will come from, so I write them all down in a special notebook. I even write down the ideas I think are dumb – sometimes they turn out to be the best ones.

8. What’s your favorite book that you wrote?

I like them all for different reasons – Alice the Fairy is based on my daughter, Good Boy, Fergus! Is about my dog, and I like Jangles because it’s about fishing. But probably No, David! is my favorite because it reminds me of being a kid!

9. About No, David! – Is David really you?

Sort of – David is based on me, but he’s not exactly me. I got the idea from a book I made when I was little. I drew a bunch of pictures of me doing stuff I wasn’t supposed to do. The only words in the whole book were “No” and “David” because those were the only words I knew how to spell! My mom saved it and showed it to me many years later. I thought it might be a good children’s book, so I wrote some more words and drew new pictures. That’s the No, David! You’ve seen.

Click here to see the original No, David

10. Did you really do all the things David does?

I did some of the things David does, but not all of them. I’m not telling which ones I did.

11. Did you really run down the street without any clothes on?

Like I said, I didn’t do all the things David does. Some of them were things my brother did or my friends did. As for running outside naked, that was something my nephew did – and he lived in Alaska! Brrr…

12. Which do you like better – writing or illustrating?

I like both – they’re very different problems and solutions. Have you ever heard the saying “A picture’s worth a thousand words”? Well, sometimes the opposite is true. Try drawing what something smells like – it’s really hard. But if I tell you something smells like a sweaty old sock in a bowl of spoiled milk, you have a pretty good idea!

13. Which do you like better – illustrating your own stories, or someone else’s?

I probably like illustrating my own stories more because I can keep changing the words while I draw the pictures. But the cool thing about illustrating someone else’s story is it takes me to places I wouldn’t go by myself.

14. How long does it take to make a book?

It takes about a year. First, I have to figure out what’s going to be on each page. I start by drawing lots of very scribbling “thumbnail” sketches. They’re called that because they’re about as big as a thumbnail. Sometimes I do hundreds of them!

After I decide on the pictures, I make full-size pencil drawings. I make lots of mistakes, and I change lots of things, and I erase a lot. Sometimes I get really frustrated and I crumple up my drawing and throw it away!

Click on the images below to see enlarged!

When I’ve got the drawings just the way I want, I make full-color paintings of them. But I still change things as I paint. Sometimes I get a completely new idea and start over!

When all the paintings are done, I spread them out on the floor and look at them all together. It feels really good to see the whole book finished.