I am so excited to announce that Dreamworks Animation is currently wrapping up a feature animated film based on my book, The Wild Robot. The movie will open in theaters on September 20, 2024, and they’ve just released the movie poster and the first teaser trailer and announced the cast of voice actors. I’ve known about this movie for quite a while now, and I’m so glad I can finally share the details. My love of animation is what first made me want to go to art school. I grew up watching classic Disney animation and going to animation festivals… 

In 2016 I published my first children’s novel, The Wild Robot. It’s the story of a robot named Roz and her struggle to survive on a remote, wild island. As it turns out, Roz doesn’t just survive, she adapts, and learns to communicate with the wildlife, and then she develops animal friends and even a family. Roz makes the island her home. But that wasn’t the whole story. You see, from the moment I started dreaming up The Wild Robot, I was also dreaming up the sequel. It would be another survival story, only this time Roz would have to… 

So, I wrote my first children’s novel. It wasn’t a graceful process, but I survived the stress and the solitude and the crippling self-doubt, and now my novel has entered the world. It’s called The Wild Robot. If you have a few minutes I’d like to tell you about it. Back in 2008, while working on a picture book called The Curious Garden, I spent a lot of time making sketches like this- I loved imagining scenes of nature living in surprising places. And that got me thinking about scenes of unnatural things living in surprising places, and I made…