The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I love telling stories from a kid's point of view because they don't really see all the obstacles in front of them. They're resilient, and sometimes adults can steal that from them.
The type of stories I write are about young people grappling with the biggest problems in their lives, often problems that are bigger than they're actually capable of solving.
When I was a kid, the book that I liked the most was 'Aesop's Fables.' There was a version of it that my father read stories to us kids out of. I liked the idea of the short story format.
Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.
When I started writing and illustrating, I knew little of classic children's literature. My stories came from real life, from my concerns about what was happening in the world.
I like stories that affect families.
I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living.
I loved stories as a kid, both being read to me and enjoying on my own. All these stories inspired my imagination, and that's what I have always aimed at doing for my readers: ignite their imaginations.
Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.
I just want to be part of great stories that are told and for them to be relevant.
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