But in an adult cartoon, I might simplify a face down to just a pair of eyes on a circle. I tried to keep the drawing style quite similar to my adult cartooning. I had to find a way to warm up some of the coolness, which is in my adult cartooning, without feeling like I’d poured a bucket of icing sugar over the top of it and without it becoming something saccharine and losing some of the charm that I hope is in my adult work. And the humor would have to be a different type of humor, which could be enjoyed by a small child as well as an adult. I knew that a children’s story couldn’t be as dry and maybe as subtle in the same ways as my adult cartoons. I think the hardest thing was trying to keep what’s good about my cartoons for adults-or what I like about them and what I enjoy-and translating that into a children’s world without losing what’s good about them. What’s been most challenging about transitioning from illustrating for adults to illustrating for kids? The girls liked the story, and I told it to them a few more times, and we talked about what we liked about it. So I began the project by accident in that ten-minute piece of improvisation. I came up with this story about a little princess who, when she falls asleep, turns into a log. One night, I was, as I occasionally did at the time, making up a bedtime story for the girls and improvising it. So we called her “the log,” and it was a kind of family joke. Almost nothing will wake her up in between. She closes her eyes, she sleeps, and she wakes up refreshed in the morning. My younger daughter, ever since she was a baby, sleeps like a log every night. The fairy tale that I wrote came about through our family. That’s what got me excited about finally committing to doing a story of my own. I had boot camp in children’s stories then, and I realized how much I loved reading the good ones, how much I hated reading the bad ones, and how important this kind of bedtime story ritual was. I have two daughters, and I went through that stage that a lot of parents go through when you’re reading bedtime stories to them every night, sometimes two or three short books.
But I never really had a story that excited me enough to take the time to make the book. A kids’ book seemed like a really fun format to try. I’ve always liked storytelling with my pictures, and I’ve made comic books and short cartoons. I’ve wanted to make a kids’ book probably for as long as I’ve been an illustrator.