I’m not sure exactly how I feel about luck. Thomas...

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about luck.  Thomas Jefferson was a great believer (“The harder I work, the more I have of it.”).  But others, like the venerable Obiwan Kenobi, would have nothing of it (“In my experience, there’s no such thing.”).

One dreary winter day, a few years back, I was on my way home from the post office, having just mailed the signed contract for my first picture book off to my publisher.  It was quite a moment.  After wanting to make a children’s book for more than fifteen years, I was finally about to embark on the process for the very first time.  So it was hard to not feel a bit superstitious when, while crossing the slushy street, I saw a lone red ball rolling gently in the grey periphery. After all, this was the same red from the book.  The red that can be made real from a child’s marker.  And somehow it was there, popping off the page and into this literal crossroad.  I picked it up and took it home, hoping its previous owner wouldn’t mind.

Since Journey published, what has surprised me the most is the feeling that this book is not something I created.  At any given point in the book making process, I found myself working hard, but working hard at details; small moments of attention that would slowly build a book: a thumbnail gesture, a castle’s brick work, a dip of a brush in water.  I rarely stopped to see the whole, and found that even upon publication, in reading the book to children, (though I recognized the places, the characters, the lines, and colors) I felt as if the end result could not have come from me.  Like the red ball, it appeared.  

And for this I am gracious and a bit amazed.