One of the greatest, unplanned consequences of my expansion from picturebooks to novels has been that my books have kept pace with my readership. Once, a woman said to me, "My kids have grown up with your books," and it struck me as perhaps the best moment in my career.

Because it is, actually, true. Children that I signed picturebooks who now find them too young are now reading my novels, as if I made them specifically FOR them. And who is to say that I did not? Maybe the creative muse someti...