The Watsons have lost sight of the fact that Mercy Watson is a pig, and they love her truly, madly, deeply. They live next door to two elderly sisters, Eugenia Lincoln and Baby Lincoln. Eugenia Lincoln is horrified that a pig is living in the house next door. Baby Lincoln secretly likes Mercy a great deal.
Mercy Watson is pure fun for me as a writer, because I think of her as kind of sorbet - a palate cleanser - between larger works. It's always a relief to come back to her.
I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.
Mercy Watson is obsessed with toast. What was blocking me was the challenge of trying to understand what she loves, what motivates her. That was the missing piece. Toast became the physical symbol of Mercy's hopefully endearing greed and obsession. Without that element in place, it didn't make sense.
Mercy Watson is a pig. She lives with Mr. and Mrs. Watson, who are not pigs. I had that basic premise, but I couldn't make it work. I would come back to it, try it, see that I was failing, and put it aside.
I think of Mercy Watson like a superball; there's a bouncy kind of optimism to her stories. She allows me to play, and she makes me laugh. Hopefully readers feel the same way.
For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.
To me the book is like having a kid. I have to let it go out in the world, and great things will happen. Maybe they won't, but it has to keep on moving.
Minnesota has been so good to me and so pleased that I love Minnesota.
This is the great thing about writing for kids. Adults might not do anything if they recognized me. But if they do see me, and they're with a kid, they'll tell the kid who I am. They think they should give that to the kid. So generally that sends the kid over.
I think, oh my god, kids are reading, and they care about a book enough to come over and talk to me about a book that they care about. If I think about it as being a celebrity, it would freak me out. But I just think, lucky me, that I get to be a part of this whole thing.
The image I had was very clear, and so in that way The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane began like other books.
I think for everybody reading can be a solace, illumination, education.
Reading might not be the way that the child engages with the world, but it should be something that they all learn how to do, and that they get to have for themselves, as opposed to somebody telling them what to do and how to do it.
The only control you have over a movie is whether or not you decide to sell the rights.
I've been recognized in airports lots of places, but mostly getting recognized is at home.
Anybody who puts a book into someone else's hands inspires me - teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents.
I read my books out loud to myself because of the demands of the story and demands of language.
I journal for about half an hour, and by the time that's done, the business day on the East Coast has begun. The phone starts to ring, and the rest of the day is spent dealing with the business of writing. My workday is done at about 3:00.
In my stories for children, I sometimes show a hard, harsh, dangerous world. I'm going to show you the way it is, but I'm going to also tell you that there's every reason to hope.
On the return flight from my mother in Florida , I sat next to a businessman who asked me what I did for a living. I said, "I write," and it seemed totally ridiculous in the face of what had just happened. I mean, I couldn't think of anything more pointless than telling stories. He asked, "What do you write?" I said, "I write children books."
I'm continually astonished with myself how different people bring out things in me that I never knew I had inside me. Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.
It's a weird kind of disconnect that this whole story [he Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane] grew around a real doll of mine, and here he is, with his "Edward" expression on his face. It's kind of reality bumping into fantasy.
The Tale of Despereaux came at the request of Luke, my friend's then-eight-year-old son, who asked, "Write for me the story of an unlikely hero with exceptionally large ears."
The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.
