The Wild Robot movie from DreamWorks Animation (based on my book) was released in September of 2024 and was a massive success. At one point it was the #1 most watched movie in the world, and went on to earn multiple Golden Globe nominations and Academy Award nominations. In addition to the original version of my book, we also published a Movie-Tie-In edition of the book, which has movie art on the cover and 8-pages of full-color still images from the movie, otherwise this edition is the same as the original. My love of animation is what first made me… 

I was blown away by the amazing response to my first novel, The Wild Robot. Thank you to everyone who read and shared it! I’ve been hard at work on the sequel, The Wild Robot Escapes, and I cannot wait for you all to find out what happens to Roz after she leaves the island. What I love most about writing children’s novels is how it forces me to focus on what’s truly important to the story. I don’t want to bore young readers with unnecessary details. And so, when in doubt, I keep the story simple. This approach worked… 

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…