I wrote So Happy! while I was working on my novel Olive’s Ocean. At the time, I was stuck and needed to take a break from the novel for a while. And because I’ve always admired Anita Lobel’s work—the beautiful tableaux she paints, the rich subtexts she creates while always remembering that it is children for whom her books are intended—I had her in mind when I wrote So Happy! I’ve read about playwrights who write with a particular actor or actress in mind; this was kind of the same thing. I kept the text very simple and imagined what amazing things Anita might do with it. When Anita said yes, that she would illustrate my words, I was ecstatic, of course. I was, and am, so happy.

What initially drew you to the story?

 Two things--that it was by you, whom I have admired and loved as a colleague and friend for a long time, and that it was minimal. I like nothing better than to take a well-chiseled minimal text and propel it into the visual world on the pages of a picture book. I liked the various elements, spoken and unspoken—mother, flower, little boy, rabbit, earth, seed under the earth, the stormy then peaceful clouds. . . .

You write your own books. How is it different to illustrate the words of someone else?

 My own texts usually grow out of pictures that I want to paint. The scope and shape of a book is always exacting, but attempting to interpret and enrich the text of another writer—especially a fine, established writer—is more daunting. I find great pleasure in making visible the unexpected layers of content in a story. I want to get it right, and I hope I have the fun of surprising the author as well.

Why did you decide to set the story in the Southwest?

 There are clues in the words—“The sun shone,” “there was no rain,” “the seed didn’t grow.” Even “someone”—it had to be Mama, but that is a secret.

 The text of So Happy! was sent to me last summer, when I was in Vermont. I immediately started photographing a nearby brook. I considered midsummer flowers. It rained and rained in Vermont. Things grew and grew. The northeastern landscape felt like a rain forest. This won’t do at all, I thought. I decided that the boy lived someplace hotter, drier, and perhaps more declamatory than New England! When the rabbit got lost, cacti and other desert growth would be more frightening than the gentle vegetation I was surrounded with. And when the rain came, the boy would emerge from his sulk; it felt liberating, in an archetypal sort of way.

There is no father mentioned in the text. When did you decide he’d play an important role in the pictures?

 There was really no need to search for a deep motivation for a spunky rabbit to hop away from his warren and go exploring, but I felt I should suggest a reason for the boy’s sulk. I always like to go behind the text in the opening pages of my books. This was a fine moment for a picture of mother and son waving good-bye to the father riding away. Then the boy’s boredom is not arbitrary but comes from missing his father. When Papa comes back on the last page, he brings the boy a book on bridge building. The boy may have missed sharing thoughts that he could only share with his father.

 What is a typical day like for you when you’re in the middle of illustrating a book?

 I don’t always work all day, every day. In the wintertime, in the city, I tend to keep fairly normal workday hours. In the summertime, in the country, I literally get up with the sun. By noon, I have had a complete day’s work. With preliminary sketches, work is more fluid, more promising; changes are constant but not troublesome. But when I am in the middle of finished pictures, after working late into the night, I often go to bed worrying about the completed or nearly completed picture on my desk. I hope that when I wake up, it will not demand a redoing. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it looks better in the morning.