Benny and Penny are such endearing characters, where did the idea come from to make them mice?
A. When I first began illustrating I drew a lot of mice, but one day it occured to me that I hadn’t drawn any mice characters in a long time. I started sketching. One of my sketches showed a little mouse pushing his baby sister into a laundry hamper. That gave me the idea to do a story about a little boy mouse who is trying to get away from his sister. The initial version was set indoors and he did hide her in a laundry hamper; but when I changed to an outdoor setting I replaced the laundry hamper with a small shed. Originally the mice were called Tyler and Bella. We decided that these names might be a little difficult for beginning readers so they were changed to Benny and Penny. Q. You have a great way of tackling issues between siblings, as in Benny and Penny in Just Pretend, do you draw on your own life experiences for inspiration? A. No, I don’t necessarily draw on my own experiences. I just have a natural sense of how kids behave with each other. I sort of “become” them as I writ
