I love sharing my books with kids. So that’s been kind of an unexpected joy. I’ve gotten to see a lot of the country and to visit a lot of schools, and I expected to sort of lead a really cloistered life as a writer. I thought it was just going to be me alone in a room.
And there is a lot of that, but it’s nice. It’s kind of leavened with these trips where I get to go and meet people and see places and read books to kids. That’s been a really kind of unexpected pleasure from this job. Yeah. The word cute is an indignity that is inflicted upon me and all kids’ books.
It’s obviously always meant as a compliment, but I think it shows sort of also the sort of poverty of our language in describing art and our reaction to art, because I know when we say that’s adorable or that’s cute for a picture book, we just – we’re trying to express our appreciation and express how it made us feel, but so often I think it’s not what we actually mean.
And I – and I just wish we had a sort of richer vocabulary to talk about how books and especially – I wish we had a richer vocabulary to talk about how books and especially picture books make us feel.
