From Elmo, to Pigeon, to Knuffle Bunny with some stops with sheep and spying kids Mo Willems sits down (at his computer) with Athomedad.org to talk about his life in animation and children's books.

How did you get involved in Sesame Street?

Luck and hard work. I had been working at CTW drawing "smiley faces" for the research department; they would ask kids: "How did you feel about this show you just saw?" and the kids could point to different characters with different emotions. So I was doing this for a couple of bucks an hour down in some hallway and hawking my flyers for a comedy show I did. Of course, nobody ever came to the shows, but they knew I was doing them, and somebody invited me to audition as a writer for Sesame Street. I handed in some sketches I'd written and about eight months later they said, "Okay, we're gonna let you become a Sesame Street auditioner," a process that took another half year or so. At the same time, Arlene Sherman saw my films; I had given them to CTW some two years before and they had finally reached her desk. She said, "Oh, you're auditioning and you're the guy who made Iddy Biddy Beat -- let's talk."

Within the year I was making films for them and writing for The Muppets. It was a very good year.

What are some of the favorite scenes that you have written for Sesame Street?

I’m probably most known for creating Suzie Kabloozie on Sesame Street, but I got a kick out making live action and stop-motion shorts involving my friends dressed as giant letters dancing around on Coney Island or my father throwing a piece of pottery. As for the muppets, I loved putting Elmo in costumes and wrote quite a few pieces about Baby Bear being an artist.

You are also the head write for Codename: Kids Next Door and a writer for Sheep in the Big City. How did you become involved in animation?

My degree is in film animation, which at the time was about as useful as a degree in toast-making. Fortunately for me, some of my student shorts garnered enough attention in festivals to get me commissions to make more animated shorts. Eventually this led to a steady gig producing cartoons for Sesame Street, which led to creating a series of shorts for Nickelodeon (The Off-Beats), which led to my getting a full series on Cartoon Network (Sheep in the Big City), which led me to getting my series canceled and replaced by a friend’s show (Codename: Kids Next Door), which led to me head-writing for that show, which led me to books, which led me producing animated cartoons based on my books, which led me to answering this question.

Seems like I have a bad case of lead poisoning. [Collective groan.]

Why make the transition to children’s books?

It’s both an evolution and a devolution.

An evolution in the sense that after knocking out TV scripts for “Sheep in the Big City” and “KND” week after week after week, I wanted to try a different type of story-telling with a more liberal schedule. In this, I’m following a tradition of animators like Ted Geisel, P.D. Eastman, Virgil “VIP” Parch, and Mordicai Gerstein by moving from animation to Picture Books. After years of formats (square aspect ratio, 11 minute stories, etc.), it’s liberating to control the size of a page its content in ways that are seldom possible in TV (and even festival) animation.

It’s a devolution in the sense that my career began by making cartoon shorts for “Sesame Street” where I could do everything (write, design, animate, ink and paint) in my home studio. There was a pleasurable solitude involved in crafting these weird little films on my own. As my career shifted to longer TV projects and I needed larger and larger crews to produce them, I found myself managing more than drawing. So, book making is kind of a return to an individual, independent period where I can draw funny pictures again.

What is your process for writing? Are there pictures before story? Are they concurrent?

Both. Neither.

I like to explore the inner workings of my character and his/her situation before I trudge into the messy work of plot-y, beginning-middle-end stuff. So, I sketch and write, doodle and outline, walk and think. It’s important for my characters to be fully realized, living beings before I slap a story on them.

How important is the adult audience in your writing?

The only difference between adults and children is that adults are, by and large, older. I write for people. Children, because they haven’t been around very long, have no patience for ironic writing, but otherwise their tastes are remarkably similar to adults: they don’t want to be lectured to, they want to be engaged in the story’s characters, they want to laugh. Being a person myself, I find that if I laugh at something, others probably will also chuckle at the same thing.

How did Pigeon come about?

Pigeon was born almost accidentally in a sketchbook in Oxford, England during a summer holiday where I was determined to write a ‘great’ children’s book. Although I never thought of The Pigeon of being worthy of his own book, as the month wore on, my labors at ‘greatness’ were increasingly being interrupted by sketches of this funny, impossibly cheeky little bird.

Trying to mollify the bird, I let him star in a little sketchbook that I publish annually for friends, colleagues and family. A few people got a chuckle out of Pigeon’s persistent pleadings, and I thought that was that.

But it wasn’t.

My agents agreed. When I presented them my ‘great’ ideas, they quickly tossed them in the ‘dud’ bin and started talking about how amusing Pigeon was. Cornered, I gussied the bird up (making him presentable so to speak) with the result being DON’T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS!

As you can tell, Pigeon is not easy to mollify. Soon he demanded a follow up. But this time I got him! I set him up against The Duckling, a character even more stubborn than him.

Breaking the fourth wall and transforming the reader/listener into a character/yeller was key to the first book from the beginning. Everyone is constantly bombarded by what they cannot do, but children in particular never get the opportunity to restrain others. A good, loud, “NOOOO!” can help rebalance a kid’s world.

Do you find that the Caldecott Honors you have received [Willems received one for Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and for Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale ] have impacted your creative process?

The Caldecott Honor is, well, an honor, particularly for a first book. Suddenly, your work is thrown in with some of the strongest Children’s literature of the last sixty years. There’s nothing like getting invited to the big kids’ party.

On a practical level, it’s nice to see that the committee ‘got’ the book, rewarding to realize the book’s expanded exposure, and I dig silver stickers.

The Honor, however, pales in comparison to a room full of laughing, yelling people crowded on a library floor.

What were some of your favorite children’s books growing up?

As a kid I was as lonely as Charlie Brown, as philosophical as Linus, as self-centered as Lucy, and as coordinated as Woodstock, so those Peanuts collections that I picked up at the local K&B drugstore and lunch counter for 75 cents were a perfect fit.

I also dug Spiderman in the mid and late 70’s. It was like reading about Charlie Brown with superpowers.

What are some of your current favorites for children?

I like anything that’s written and illustrated with a personal vision and a respect for its audience.