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My early comics are really reflective of being kind of a befuddled, single loser in the Bay Area, and I think having kids has been by far the most profound impact on me as a person and as an artist.

It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.

I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim to know more about interesting children than most.

I began illustrating children's books because of a growing disillusionment with the sort of work I was doing in the advertising industry. Book publishing offered me the chance to be far more creative.

Having children changes you forever, as a writer and as a human being. I hope it's for the better on both counts, but I guess we'll see.

I became a children's author by accident.

Television and comic books are, and continue to be, probably the biggest influence in my life. It's the biggest influence on everybody's life.

I'd always been around kids, and when you don't have kids, you have a lot more time to do things. Before I had kids, I was a lot more prolific and wrote books a lot faster.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.