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A lot of the books that I grew up reading were pretty brutal, like the 'Redwall' books.

I remember my favorite books when I was a kid: 'The Redwall Adventure' series, 'Ender's Game,' things like that.

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.

As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.

I loved anything to do with animals from a very early age.

I was nuts for stuff in the Middle Ages when I was just in the third and fourth grades.

I think fondly of the rabbit holes I disappeared down when I researched papers for history and English because I couldn't find quite what I was looking for, or because I had to go through so much material to find examples for my thesis.

Peter was 2 years and 10 months old when we began to study him. He was afraid of a white rat, and this fear extended to a rabbit, a fur coat, a feather, cotton wool, etc., but not to wooden blocks and similar toys.

I'm a bit of a history goon, and I love all that. Anything that's medieval-based up until, probably, the Tudor period and just after, I'm quite into.

I remember having mice in the house and my father taking some newspaper and beating me because mice was running on me while I was asleep.