The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.
A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.
Gorillas remind me of my father. He was a very big, physically strong man but also very sensitive.
The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.
Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.
Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
