When I was a young girl, I had two older brothers who took great joy in teasing me. They told me ankle grabbers lived under my bed and if I sat on my bed and dangled my feet, these ankle grabbers would pull me under my bed and I would disappear.
 

They also told me that because I had polk-a-dots on my wallpaper, the little people who lived in the polk-a-dots would watch me undress. Being little, I believed my brothers and dressed under my bed sheets.

When I was in the fourth grade, having figured out my brothers were just teasing me, I began keeping journals of the silly things they would say and do. Then I began adding things my pets did. Finally, I began to write down everything I saw and heard every day.

When I was in my early twenties, my mother found my journals and I turned the stories into my first book called, Happy Apple Told Me. But, I learned a very hard lesson writing that first book. I learned that you don’t just write a book; you rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite a book. Thirty years later, I am still learning.