Peter Brown Talks ‘The Wild Robot on the Island’

A podcast interview with Peter Brown discussing The Wild Robot on the Island on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

With the release of The Wild Robot on the Island, Peter Brown reflects on the creative process of transforming his beloved novel into a richly illustrated picture book.

Join host Bianca Schulze for an in-depth conversation with Caldecott Honor winner Peter Brown about his stunning new picture book adaptation, The Wild Robot on the Island. In this thoughtful discussion, Peter reveals the creative challenges of condensing his beloved novel into a visual format for younger readers, his philosophy on writing meaningful children’s stories without being preachy, and how becoming a new father has deepened his understanding of the parent-child relationships at the heart of his work.

From the collaborative process of book publishing to the artistic decisions behind Roz’s world, Peter shares insights into the craft of storytelling that will resonate with educators, parents, and anyone passionate about children’s literature. Discover how this bridge book serves as an entry point for reluctant readers while maintaining the emotional depth that has made The Wild Robot series a global phenomenon.

Perfect for teachers, librarians, parents, and aspiring children’s book creators looking for authentic insights into the publishing world and the art of adaptation.

Subscribe to The Growing Readers Podcast to ensure you never miss an episode celebrating the creators shaping young readers’ lives.

Listen to the Episode

Show Notes

Publisher’s Book Summary: This gorgeously illustrated picture book adaptation brings to full color the adventures of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Wild Robot.
 
Roz is not where she’s supposed to be.
 
You see, the robot wasn’t designed to live in the wilderness. But when she washes up on an island, she must learn from the animal inhabitants and adapt to her new, natural surroundings, and before long, the island begins to feel like home.
 
Filled with bestselling creator and award-winning artist Peter Brown’s stunning artwork, this moving picture book is the perfect gift for readers new to The Wild Robot or for longtime fans of the series that sparked a global phenomenon.

Note: This is NOT a continuation of the series. It is a picture book adaptation of the first book in the series, The Wild Robot.

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Other Books Mentioned:

About the Author

Peter Brown has always loved telling stories. Growing up in New Jersey, he told stories by drawing whimsical characters and scenes from his imagination. As a teenager, he fell in love with writing and began telling his tales with words. While studying illustration at Art Center College of Design, Peter’s love of both words and pictures led him to take several courses on children’s books, and before long he knew he’d found his calling.

After graduating from Art Center Peter moved to New York City to be closer to the publishing industry. He was working on animated TV shows when he signed a book deal to write and illustrate his first picture book, Flight of the Dodo. Peter quickly signed up his second and third books, and his career as an author and illustrator of children’s books was under way.

Since then Peter has written and illustrated many books for children and earned numerous honors, including a Caldecott Honor, a Horn Book Award, two E.B. White Awards, two E.B. White Honors, a Children’s Choice Award for Illustrator of the Year, two Irma Black Honors, a Golden Kite Award, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award and multiple New York Times bestsellers.

Peter lives in Maine with his wife, Susan, and their dog, Pam.

You can learn more about Peter and his writing at www.peterbrownstudio.com.

Credits:

Host: Bianca Schulze

Guest: Peter Brown

Producer: Kelly Rink and Bianca Schulze

Read the Transcript

Growing Readers Podcast: Interview with Peter Brown

Bianca Schulze: Hi, Peter. Welcome to the Growing Readers Podcast.

Peter Brown: Thanks for having me, Bianca.

Bianca Schulze: I’ve been dying for this moment. I’m a huge fan of the series. I’ve watched the movie. So I’m super excited about what we’ll dive into. But before we kind of get into your writing and your creation of art, I love to do some rapid fire questions just to warm up the conversation. And I have some Wild Robot themed questions for you. Are you ready? Okay. If you were stranded on a deserted island like Roz, what’s the first thing you’d try to learn from the animals?

Peter Brown: Yeah, let’s hear them.

Bianca Schulze: Okay. If you were stranded on a deserted island like Roz, what’s the first thing you’d try to learn from the animals?

Peter Brown: Wow. Let’s see. I’d probably listen to the sounds that they make and try to understand when they’re making danger sounds. You know, which would probably be about me at first, but my biggest fear would be other animals like predators. So all the little creatures will make a sound when there’s a predator nearby. And if I can learn what that sound is, then I’ll know when other predators are nearby. So sorry, that’s a long rambling answer, but there you go.

Bianca Schulze: No, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. All right. Robot or human? Who do you think would be better at surviving in the wilderness?

Peter Brown: Boy, well it depends on the robot and the human. If it’s me, the chances are very slim of survival because I am not a survivalist at all. But yeah, I don’t know. Boy. Overall, I would have to say maybe robot.

Bianca Schulze: All right. All right. Well, what’s one piece of technology you wish you could live without for a month?

Peter Brown: Without. That’s good. My iPhone probably is the first thing that comes to mind. I spend too much time on that thing.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I feel like who doesn’t at this point? They’re kind of like a dangerous tool, but we can’t live without them. All right, if animals could rate your survival skills from one to ten, what do you think they’d give you?

Peter Brown: Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, if animals could rate your survival skills from one to ten, what do you think they’d give you?

Peter Brown: Gosh, I think they would laugh at me maybe two, three tops. They would read me right away. They would just by the way that I stumble through the woods, they’d be like this guy’s got no chance.

Bianca Schulze: I feel like I’m the same.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, on a quick tangent, my daughter did the National Outdoor Leadership School, a 30 day in the wilderness trip with no devices. So, I mean, I think I’d be a two or a three, but if I had to be lost with someone, I’d pick her now. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, home is where you’re from or home is where you feel you belong. Which philosophy resonates most with you and which would resonate most with Roz?

Peter Brown: Wow.

Peter Brown: Yeah, me too.

Peter Brown: I think she and I would both agree that home is where you belong. And a lot of times that overlaps with where you’re from, but not always. And I think what matters most to her and to me is where you feel like you belong. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, that’s beautiful and kind of a nice segue into the picture book and Roz’s world itself. So let’s start with the big picture. So the Wild Robot has become an incredible phenomenon with five million copies sold and an Oscar nominated film. So how does it feel to be bringing Roz back to her roots with a new picture book?

Peter Brown: It feels pretty… it feels like home a little bit actually. You know, this world of Roz and her family and friends on the island is just such a cozy, comfy place for me to live, you know, creatively that it was really a satisfying experience to kind of go back to the island and be able to spend more time in my imagination on that island. And find ways of bringing that to life for readers. The reason I made The Wild Robot on the Island picture book is because after telling readers how Roz becomes the wild robot with words, and there are a few illustrations in the novel, but not tons, I thought it would be really interesting to show readers how Roz becomes the wild robot with big detailed colorful pictures. So it was really fun.

And, you know, I’m an illustrator kind of first and foremost. I went to art school and I studied illustration. And even though I’m writing novels now, illustration is my real background. So that was comfy for me, too, to just be able to spend time in that world and use the skills that I’ve developed over my whole life as an illustrator and artist. It was great. It was a really great project for me.

Bianca Schulze: Well, for listeners who might be discovering Roz for the first time, I can’t imagine that we have too many that are. But just in case, can you paint us a picture of what makes this robot so special? What is it about her story that resonates across age groups?

Peter Brown: So, you know, The Wild Robot, The Wild Robot kind of universe, including the first novel in the series and the picture book is about a robot who finds herself stranded on a remote wild island and in order to survive, she studies how the wild animals survive, begins mimicking their behavior and ends up learning how to communicate with them, at which point she can make friends and even a little family for herself.

And so you’re really watching a character become human in a way. She’s becoming a real person. She’s becoming a character that we can relate to with friends and with family and with family drama. After she gets through the survival part of the story, she moves on to stuff that we all experience. Dealing with friends, trying to fit in, trying to belong, trying to win people over or characters over. And so I think what really resonates with readers is that we’re watching in a sci-fi fantasy story, we’re watching a character live through a lot of the experiences that we live through every day. I often think Roz becomes a single mom, she adopts an orphan gosling on this island and raises him and she can speak with the animals so she can have conversations with him. And they have a really interesting relationship.

And I often think if I had written a book, a more realistic fiction book about a single mom and her son, I would have maybe been interested in that story. But I don’t think it would have captivated imaginations as much because it’s a little too on the nose. It’s a little too familiar. It’s a little… I mean, I was raised by a single mom, by the way. So that’s probably not a coincidence that that’s where I took this story. But I think if I’d written my story of me being raised by a single mom, it would have been much less interesting to young readers. And so the fact that I can wrap that relationship in a science fiction fantasy world just invites everybody in to the conversation.

And so people who might not really relate to single moms or their kids or whatever, suddenly they’re cheerleading. They’re rooting for Roz and they’re rooting for Brightbill. I’m not sure that would happen in a more realistic story. So that was kind of a magical thing to watch happen, to see all these readers really connect with these characters in deep personal ways that I think could have only happened with a robot and a goose and wild animals on an island.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, you know, I talk to so many authors like every day through email mostly from, you know, self-published or people that are just coming up with an idea and, you know, to people that are superstars like you. And I feel like that’s kind of the secret, the like, the not being too on the nose.

And it’s like, but how do you… how do you find the best way to express that is when you know that you’re maybe being too on the nose versus, do you know what I mean? Like, because you want this beautiful story to not necessarily be a lesson, but the reader wants to leave with something, right? And I feel like when, if you’re trying to leave the reader with something, then that’s when it becomes on the nose. So it’s like, how for you do you find that magical sweet spot of telling a story that leaves a reader feeling something but isn’t on the nose?

Peter Brown: You know, for me, I love this question because it’s something I didn’t really start thinking about until well into the writing process for The Wild Robot, the first novel. I was so focused on the plot. I was so focused on the scenarios that I was coming up with. The sort of subtle themes that began to develop, they were happening almost accidentally, you know. I didn’t set out to write a story about a single mom in the wilderness. I set out to write a survival story of a robot in the wilderness. And how would that unfold? To me, that was really interesting. There was no lessons really, you know, there’s no like morals that I was worried about. I was just like, how would this actually happen?

And I just sort of walked through this process step by step. And with each step, I began discovering new little layers in the characters and the themes that felt very organic to the story. Like I wasn’t forcing it. These were little cool things that were happening and I wasn’t setting out to do that. And so I think I can’t speak for other writers, of course, but in my opinion, you have to be really careful when there’s a message that you’re trying to convey. I think you’re more likely to express a message, a meaningful message to readers, if you focus on what the story needs to work, kind of the craft of writing first and foremost. If you can get the plotting and the pacing and the character development and the story arc, if you can get all that stuff working, probably there’s going to be a lesson whether you set out to do it or not that emerges from that process. And even if it’s not exactly the message that you might have set out or wanted to convey, you know, it’s probably a worthwhile message anyway, and maybe that’s the message that needs to be told in this particular story. And you can kind of let go of the other messages that maybe you had thought you wanted to emphasize, you know.

That’s what happened with me. You know, as I developed all the different layers to this story, I had ideas about little morals that maybe I wanted to kind of focus on, but I, every time I just kind of let them go and focused on the craft of writing and what does the story need to keep people turning those pages. And when I was finished, I was kind of blown away by all the juicy stuff that kind of materialized on its own, you know?

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I love that. I love that perfect sort of synergy between plot and structure and then your imagination and letting the story tell you what it needs to be. Yeah, I love that. Well, The Wild Robot on the Island is specifically for the picture book crew, which, you know, I think picture books are for everyone, but they do tend to skew towards a younger audience. And so this is younger than the chapter book series. So what do you think having it in this picture book format does for the series as a whole? Like what do you think having a picture book version…

Peter Brown: I think that this book does a couple of things. First of all, it’s kind of an introduction for younger readers into this whole world of The Wild Robot. The Wild Robot books are actually being read by kids way younger than I expected. A typical middle grade novel, they say, is like eight to twelve year old readers. That’s what it says on the back of the book for eight to twelve year old readers. But a lot of kids younger than eight are reading it and kids older than twelve are reading it too. So that’s… I mean, that’s amazing.

But I set out with a picture book to really target younger readers to give them a way into this story. Maybe this specific reader here and there isn’t quite ready for the novel, but they’re totally ready for the picture book. And so I thought that would be fun. A lot of schools are reading this book, the whole school. I get contacted, I mean, every week practically by an educator saying that our entire school is going to be reading The Wild Robot from kindergarten through fifth, maybe sixth grade sometimes, which is great. And I kept thinking, you know, it might help those kindergartners, maybe even the first graders, if they could have in addition to this novel, maybe they start with a picture book just to get their gears turning, get their imaginations fired up. Maybe then they can move on to the novel or maybe they just leave it at the picture book. But I was definitely thinking about schools, the school environment and how these books are being incorporated into classrooms and maybe the picture book would work for younger classes of younger kids.

But I honestly was also hoping that fans of the novels, slightly older readers, would also enjoy this picture book. If they really happen to love The Wild Robot novels, they might love spending more time in that world and in a sort of new, more visual way, where they get to see the island, different parts of the island that we don’t see in the novels, or don’t even get discussed in the novels. They get to see little scenarios that don’t get explained in the novels. There’s a lot in the picture book that is in the novel, but there’s some moments here and there that are new. And so my hope was that fans of the novels would want to experience this picture book also. So I’m thinking about a lot of that stuff. To be honest with you, the main reason I decided to make this book was for me. Like I said, I just love this world so much and it just felt like such a fun project for me to sink my teeth into and really visualize this world that is mostly up in my imagination and share that with other people. To me, it was really a fun project for me, kind of selfishly, but I thought I could make it work for other people too.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I actually love that response. And I kind of feel like it goes back to what we talked about when a piece of writing feels too on the nose. And I wonder if sometimes that’s because you’re writing for somebody else as well. Like you’re writing what you think somebody else needs to hear or wants to hear. But when you really just sit and write something for you, that always is for somebody else too, because we are also interconnected and often experiencing the same things. So I love that you wrote it for you and I feel like that comes across and it’s just so beautiful. So I would actually love to hear if you have a highlight from this picture book. So it could be a favorite illustration, a favorite moment, just anything you’re particularly excited about in this picture book version.

Peter Brown: Yeah, there’s a scene, two things jumped to mind really quickly. They both happen during the winter. The Wild Robot novel and the Wild Robot on the Island, the picture book, are very kind of seasonal, right? The seasons play a big role in what happens in the story and in the picture book, the seasons play a big role in like the color palette. The colors change a lot as we turn, as we’re turning the pages and the seasons are passing by. That was really fun for me. And there’s a scene when it turns to autumn and there’s kind of a big page turn where we sort of know autumn is coming, but we turn the page and all of a sudden there’s this landscape that’s all orange and brown and red. And there’s Roz standing with her wooden foot because her foot, you know, her foot broke off and she had it replaced by the beaver. And Brightbill the goose is kind of floating on the wind above Roz. And that scene, I don’t know, there’s just something about it.

I love fall, first of all, so maybe that’s part of it, but that sort of like punch of color just really, to me, is very satisfying. And I also think it kind of is timed nicely because it’s so significant in their relationship. Fall means it’s getting cold, which means Brightbill is going to have to fly south for winter, which means Roz and Brightbill are going to have to say goodbye for the first time. And so that kind of like shock of color coincides perfectly with the shock of saying goodbye to your loved one for the first time, you know. So that’s a scene that really means a lot to me. And then a few pages later in the winter, Roz builds, they have this shelter that Roz built. It looks a lot like a kind of a beaver lodge.

And Roz spends winter in there kind of like hibernating in her own way. And there’s a very simple illustration, just a close up of Roz in this kind of dark space with what she’s thinking about as she sits alone in the shelter. And all of her thoughts are about Brightbill, her adopted goose son. And she’s thinking about what he’s doing on his migration. She’s wondering about the kind of animals that he’s met along the journey. And then the last thought she has is, I wonder if he ever thinks about me. I don’t know what it is, but to me that is so, I don’t know, human and so like sweet and emotional. I get choked up just thinking about it, which is sort of embarrassing, but…

Bianca Schulze: I love it.

Peter Brown: I think it’s because I have a son now. I didn’t have a son. My son is only eighteen months old, so I’m new to parenthood. Thank you. I’m new to parenthood and it’s kind of overwhelming to be honest with you. In a lot of ways, I’m just exhausted all the time, which is hard, but I’m also flooded with emotions all the time. You know, it’s like, it’s so intense and I kind of knew that was going to happen, but it still catches me off guard like it is right now.

Bianca Schulze: Congratulations.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, well, like, I feel like I’m going to start crying now too, because like, I have three children, but I still have like one in elementary and one middle grade, middle school, but my oldest went to college. And so for me, and particularly because I went and saw the movie of The Wild Robot too, like this story speaks to parents, I think no matter where you are on your parenting journey. And when my daughter’s off at college, I’m wondering, does she think of me? Is she thinking of me? And so it’s really poignant no matter where you’re at. Yeah, it’s definitely, for me, when I was just rereading the picture book version, that page, of course, as the adult reader just really speaks to me. I think that’s what’s important about picture books is that they do speak to all ages. A picture book that a child can enjoy on the lap of a parent who’s also enjoying it. I mean, that’s how we raise readers right from the beginning because everybody’s embraced and enjoying that moment. Yeah.

Peter Brown: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know that that’s to me every picture book I’ve ever made. I’ve tried to satisfy both the young readers and the older readers who inevitably are around either reading to their child or to their students or listening to their kid read by themselves, you know, but adults read a lot of kids books. So I try to make stories that will appeal to them too. That’s the dream, that’s the goal. It’s not easy at all, but I think it’s a worthy goal.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, well, I want to talk more about the art creation, but I was having a thought about what’s also special about this picture book format is I’m not an educator, but I would consider myself a literacy advocate. And my one mom brag is that my three kids love to read. My ten year old son will be seen walking down the street with his nose in a book. But I know that there are kids that struggle to read and I feel as though if they got connected with a picture book like this, then they’re more likely to want to leap into that sort of next level, which is a chapter book. So I love this segue that you’ve created that can connect people with a story that they feel connected to and want to dive into that deeper chapter book too.

Peter Brown: I love that. That’s really well put. Yeah. That’s, I think you just articulated something that I had been feeling, but hadn’t really put to words, which is how this could help raise readers, right? And grow readers. And that is at the end of the day, I think the job of every children’s book author and illustrator is to make kids want to pick up another book, right? That’s the goal. If… The hope is to spark their imagination, to spark their interest in story, character, or nonfiction subjects, whatever it is, just to get them to keep reading. Because as we all know, the people who love to read, they can spend their whole lives educating themselves and enlightening themselves and developing and growing into the best and truest version of themselves. And that’s what we need in this world. And so I think in the back of our heads, all of us author, illustrators of kids books have… that weighs on us a little bit. Like that’s a little bit of pressure. You don’t focus on it all the time, but as I’m having this conversation with you, I’m reminded that, yeah, at the end of the day, we’re trying to create readers with these books. And so I hope this picture book can be part of that for some readers out there.

Bianca Schulze: Well, yes to all of that, and I’m sure that it will create long life readers. Well, you’ve seen Roz come to life in so many different formats now. So novels, this picture book, and the DreamWorks film. So this is possibly too large of a question, but what does the creative process look like for deciding which elements of her story work best for each medium?

Peter Brown: Well, that’s a good question. I mean, I obviously can talk about the book side of things. You know, when they were working on the movie, I had a lot of conversations with Chris Sanders, the director, and Jeff Herman, the producer. We would get on Zoom calls a lot and they would kind of pick my brain about the research that I did and the underlying messages and just trying to understand my version of the story as best they possibly could. You know, and at the end of the day, they had to make some tough decisions. Every book that’s adapted into a film, inevitably the story gets changed a little bit. And that’s what happened with The Wild Robot. It changed a little bit.

And it was weird for me to see those changes happening, but they explained most of it, or a lot of it. And most of the changes they made made sense to me, but it is a very different medium and so they had to consider things that I didn’t have to consider and one of the best examples is the design of Roz the robot. My version of Roz is kind of very simple, very streamlined kind of iconic in a way just like it’s I was focused on designing a robot that looks immediately looks like a robot so that if you’re looking at this landscape scene and you see this tiny robot marching through the woods in the distance, you instantly know that’s a robot. Which means, Roz couldn’t look like an unusual robot. She had to look like what most people think a robot looks like. So I had to keep her design very simple and I felt good about that decision. In animation, they had a lot more flexibility, but one of the other things they had to do is figure out how does this character actually move?

And I didn’t have to worry about that. I designed Roz with a very sort of head and neck that’s like a single piece. And they needed Roz to have a separate neck so that she could move her head around in the animation and express herself with her body as she’s becoming more like the animals on the island. That happens in the book too, but I don’t have to animate it. I just had to talk about it and show a few illustrations here and there. But they needed to kind of redesign Roz in order for her to work in the form, in the animation medium. And so that’s one of those changes where I thought, yeah, that makes sense to me. I wasn’t upset by that, you know. Some of the other changes, some of the story changes they made, you know, I didn’t love all the story changes that they made, but that design change made a lot of sense to me because it’s so specific to the medium of animation. In the books, you know, with a picture book, I… It was obviously going to be for younger readers. And so I needed to remove, there’s a little bit of violence in the novel. I hesitate to use that word because I think it’s a loaded word.

Obviously violence is a very emotional subject and a scary subject. And I think I handle it very delicately in the novel, but I didn’t think it was really appropriate for the picture book at all. And that meant basically stopping the story. The picture book story ends about three quarters of the way through the novel story. You know, if you follow like in the novel, these other robots show up at the end and there’s like, there’s a sort of battle scene. And I was like, yeah, the novel, picture book doesn’t need any of that. Let’s just focus on Roz and Brightbill and her experiences on the island. And the story ends. And if you were to follow her timeline, then more trouble is just around the corner, right at the point where the story ends. But I thought this works as a picture book. I can save all the scarier stuff for the novel when the kids are ready for it. And this can just be a nice kind of happy, simple, peaceful, interesting, imaginative picture book. And so that felt very natural to me to end the story, the picture book where I did in Roz’s timeline.

But it’s a tricky thing. I mean, it’s hard to talk about a little bit, hard to explain because I’m talking about different timelines and you know, already I’m like that word just my eyes kind of glaze over. But I had to think about this stuff really carefully and make sure I got just the right amount of information from the novels in the picture book so the story made sense to fans of the novels and I had to end it at the right point and I had to omit certain, a lot of stuff. But hold on to the really important moments, you know, when Roz meets Brightbill, this orphan gosling. I mean, I can’t rush through that. I have to take my time with that scene because that is so important to the bigger story. So getting that balance right was the whole trick of the picture book. And it took a lot more work than I expected. To be honest with you, I thought this picture book would kind of be a walk in the park, but it ended up kind of kicking my butt a bit more than I had expected. So that’s usually when I know I’m on the right track is when it’s, when I make a story, if it’s too easy, then I feel like something’s wrong. You know, there’s got to be some difficulty or else something’s off that I’m not seeing yet.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah, like you haven’t reached its full potential yet. I love all of that. And the fact that the picture book goes sort of three quarters or two thirds of the way through the chapter book, again, you’re not stealing the fun of the ending for those that want to go on and read the chapter book. It’s like this beautiful introduction to the world and still so much to explore. I want to nerd out a little bit. I’m just going to make some loud noises here as I turn the pages to the very back and remove the jacket flap on the end. I love the copyright notes and the sections in picture books that describe how the art was created.

So this one says, the illustrations for this book were done in ink, on paper, and finished digitally. This book was edited by Alvina Ling and designed, and I’m sorry if I pronounce your name incorrectly, Prashansa Thapa. Did I say that correctly? Close. With art direction by David Caplan. The production was supervised by Lillian Sun and the production editor was Jenn Graham. The text was set, and hopefully I pronounced this correctly too, in Fournier MT Std and the display type was hand-lettered. So as we can tell, I am not a technical person. I’m sorry, I probably didn’t pronounce all the names correctly, but I love nerding out about all of that sort of information. And it’s that beautiful reminder of it takes a team to create such a stunning book. So just talk to me a little bit about everything we just said there.

So like the artwork is done in ink and paper and finished digitally, but we have this team here. So how, when you’re creating the work, do you work with the team? Like when do they chime in for you and what do they do to just next level your work?

Peter Brown: That’s close, yeah. Yeah.

Peter Brown: Don’t worry.

Peter Brown: Yeah, that is definitely a team effort. I spend the most, by far the most time on this project. The people that, my publisher is Little Brown Books for Young Readers, which is part of the Hachette Book Group. And the team is so great and patient first and foremost with me, because I’m a little slow. But they’re all really great at what they do. My editor, Alvina Ling, I’ve been working with her since my very first book. She’s edited every single book I’ve ever written and had published going back to 2005 with my very first picture book, Flight of the Dodo. And I’ve been working with her ever since, so she and I are good old pals. And she gives me a lot of freedom, sometimes more freedom than I want, to be honest with you. She, I think, trusts that I can figure a lot of stuff out and thinks that I probably come to the best conclusions when she gives me a little space, you know? But she’s always there. I always know she’s there.

And Dave Caplan, who is the art director. He and I have worked on a lot of books together too. Prashansa, I don’t know as well, but she’s been really great and helpful. Yeah, you know, I say this to kids all the time when I give talks at schools, which is that I can’t make a book all by myself. All I can do is write stories, write words and draw pictures and I need this whole team of people to make the books that we pick up and read. And I’m so glad to have such a great team helping me out. They introduce a whole new ideas to me about the production, you know, like they might suggest we use like a fifth color. Most books are printed using four colored inks, CMYK, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. And sometimes you can add a fifth color CMYK plus pink or a special green or whatever it is, you have to pick it out. Like that’s the kind of thing where an art director will say, I think this might be the book for a fifth color. I think this might really work nicely. And usually I’m not even thinking about that. And that kind of elevates the art to be able to get a really the perfect shade of whatever color you need just to really zing on the page. You know, that’s a great help.

And there’s so many things you can do with picture books. You can, you know, the case cover when you take the book jacket off, you can have a separate piece of art on the cover. It can be stamped so there’s like a little like kind of a texture to it. There’s just some gold foil, you know, there’s all these little things you can do to a book that I just don’t even really know about. And so that team is really helpful about with suggesting these little bells and whistles that we can add onto a book to make it feel even more special. And yeah, so I feel pretty lucky to work with all of them. I’m as an author and an illustrator, I’m very, I kind of, very detail oriented. I’m also, I would call myself kind of a designer too. I do a lot of the design work. I hand letter the title treatment. In this case for the picture book, I created a whole new font, a whole new typeface for the speech bubbles. So there’s the narration, which is Fournier. And there’s speech bubbles which look like they’re hand written out, but it’s actually special typeface that we created just for this book using my I hand wrote all these different letters and created this whole alphabet and then we hired a type designer to take all that stuff and turn it into a typeface that you could like actually type with you know. Which again is just like kind of elevating the whole project just a little bit. Now you’ve got this handmade feel to the speech bubble text and it is the hand, it’s my hand. It’s the author and illustrator’s hand at work in the actual words that you’re reading that are coming from the characters. That was important to me.

The narration, to me, I don’t mind using a font for that, an existing typeface for that. But for the characters to just keep us in that world, I thought it made sense for the words themselves to look like they belong in that world. So that’s why I did this sort of handwritten pencil. I don’t know. There’s a lot to it, but that special handwritten typeface is pretty exciting for me.

Bianca Schulze: That is so cool. I just think, again, when we see a finished book as a reader, it’s all those little details that you don’t know exactly what went into it. But that’s what comes across to the reader is just this beautiful finished package. And it’s because of all that love that goes into it.

Peter Brown: Yeah, for sure.

Bianca Schulze: I want to sort of talk a little bit more just about you and professional, but before I do, I have to say what my favorite part about the book is. And obviously I love the story and that poignant moment we talked about, like, you know, is like, am I being thought of right now? But I love that there’s so many pictures that seem to have been created in the golden hour. So like just the sun and the glow and the light, because that’s my favorite time of day. And so I love that you brought that and it’s right there. I’m looking at the book cover right now. yeah, So my favorite part is how much golden hour takes place in the book.

Peter Brown: That’s such a fun detail. That’s such a fun thing for you to notice. When I decided to make this book, it was so important to me that the color be really important to the story because there are some illustrations in the novels, but the interior illustrations are all black and white. It’s only the cover art that’s in color on the novels. For this picture book, I thought, well, now I get to use color, so I have to make it sing. I have to do really interesting stuff with the color. You’re not wrong.

A lot of the scenes are at sunset or sunrise because the color, as you know, in real life, that golden hour is just such a beautiful time to be looking around at the world. The golden reddish, orangey light that you know, streaks through a forest. And I just, I could look at that all day long and so I tried to capture that as best I could, and maybe enhance it a little bit. The light just tends to be a little pink. I love the color pink. And so I wanted the sunsets to be especially pink, you know. And you see a lot of that, you’re right, throughout the book. But that’s because that started because of my interest in boosting the color as much as I could, really getting the most out of the color in this first full color Wild Robot book. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, these sunset and sunrise scenes, where color really does interesting things. That’s nicely, well, very observant of you.

Bianca Schulze: Yay. All right. Well, in general, thinking about your whole body of work, what would you say drives you and guides you in creating books for children? And that’s a really typical question that I ask all my guests. So I want to add a little bit for you. And do you think what’s driving you has changed since you’ve had a kid?

Peter Brown: I think it will continue to change as my son grows up. He’s only eighteen months old right now, so nineteen actually, as of, anyway, almost nineteen months old. And as he gets older and he starts talking more and we really get to know him and get to know each other, I have no doubt that will influence the stories that I choose to tell, the types of stories and the way that I tell them probably will be influenced by this experience also. I wouldn’t say a lot has changed yet. I haven’t been, I haven’t really had a chance to do a whole lot since he was born.

I illustrated The Wild Robot on the Island just after he was born in a sort of state of delirium. I don’t even really remember illustrating the book, but I had it all mapped out, had it all sketched out and everything was figured out, the words and everything. So, but going forward, I’m sure my ideas will start to change. I will say this, they have changed already over the course of my career because I know in the beginning of my career, I was just so excited to get published. And I was having a lot of fun and exploring my own creativity, trying out different artistic styles and materials and even stories, a lot of silly stories and then a couple of more serious ones here and there and just kind of experimenting. And that was all fun, but it was very kind of inward looking. And as I’ve gotten older, as I’ve kind of figured a few things out about the kinds of the way I want to make art, visual art, I’ve started looking outward a bit more at the world and seeing the world that’s, I don’t want to get too political here, but that’s a little scary at times and a little confusing. You know, a lot of schools will have posters on the wall about bullying, about not being a bully and trying to end bullying. And there’s a lot of bullies in the news these days. They get a lot of attention and a lot of positive attention. And so it’s a really confusing time, I think, for young people to know what is right and what is wrong.

And that drives me for sure to create stories and characters that demonstrate the value of kindness and empathy, you know, that drive home the idea that we’re all part of some community, a global community, maybe a national community, like all different kinds of communities, but we are not alone. We need each other, absolutely. Those messages, you know, it’s funny, I talked early about not wanting to be on the nose with messages. So it’s a real struggle because I don’t, I definitely don’t want to go so far that my stories become preachy or didactic. But in the back of my head, fueling the whole thing is a desire to help kids make sense of a very confusing world. And yeah, that’s that has grown in importance over the course of my career. And so I think the sorts of stories that I’ll tell for the rest of my career, unless something major changes, will, I’ll continue to kind of hone in on that and try to find ways of bringing readers in, helping them fall in love with characters they might not expect to care about with the hope that they can then look at the real people in their lives and realize that maybe they could care about strangers in the real world as well. That’s my dream anyway. I’m being a little, no pressure, but that’s definitely what I hope to do.

Bianca Schulze: You know, like, I know that you’re saying that’s what you hope to do, but you are doing that. Like, you are living that already, and I see that in The Wild Robot, that sense of self-acceptance, as well as the acceptance of others. And, you know, like, you’ve already brought a lot of those themes in the stories that you’ve created. So I, as a parent, you know, I’m on team Peter Brown and thank you. I loved everything you just said there. Well, yeah, you’re welcome. So you’ve won a Caldecott honor, multiple awards, and now you have this major film adaptation that I loved seeing your name in the credits at the end of the movies. It’s like so fantastic. So is there a question that you wish someone would ask in interviews that you’ve never been asked?

Peter Brown: That’s really great to hear. Thank you, that’s really nice.

Peter Brown: Huh. You know, I’m trying to think. I’ve had a lot of questions asked, but not really. I think your questions have been great. I really appreciate you digging deep and asking really thoughtful questions. I have, it was funny when the movie came out, I was doing a lot of interviews with outlets that I wouldn’t normally speak to, you know, like little TV networks and big TV networks. And all the questions were exactly the same. It was just one thing after another after another. It was really mind numbing. And so it’s such a delight to speak with you and actually talk about real substantive stuff. But I don’t know. Nothing’s coming to mind. I’m sorry. I wish I had a better answer.

Bianca Schulze: No, that’s fine. Well, so now I feel like I have to ask the most mind-numbing question of our conversation. What impact do you hope The Wild Robot on the Island has on readers, and especially those that might be encountering Roz for the first time?

Peter Brown: Let’s hear it.

Peter Brown: I mean, I just hope that she captures their imaginations and makes them want to continue on with Roz in her story world, you know. That’s the hope. I mean selfishly I want them to read more of my books, but also as you were saying this book is a way to help certain readers who might be a little more reluctant or struggle with reading. I actually think this series is really great for them because of the, there’s the picture book, of course, but then even the novels have really short chapters, kind of simple language. I worked really hard to distill fairly complicated ideas into the simplest text I could possibly could so that readers of all ages would be able to connect with what was going on in the story. And I was a bit of a reluctant reader when I was growing up. And so the idea that I could have created this story world that would help other reluctant readers get over that reluctancy and become real lovers of books, that’s a dream come true. But it all happens, I think, with that first, you got to captivate them. You’ve got to pull them in with interesting characters and an interesting scenario. And that’s what I tried to do with the picture book here, with The Wild Robot on the Island. And we’ll see if that sparks readers to keep going. Hopefully it will.

Bianca Schulze: I think it will. Well, if you had to pick one point from our conversation today, just one thing we talked about, what do you think the most important thing you’d want listeners to take away from our conversation is?

Peter Brown: Probably the fact that it takes a real team to make these books. Every book that you love was made by a team of people. The author, artists, obviously they deserve to have their names on the cover. They’re doing most of the work, but I just feel so grateful that I have a publisher who… I work with a couple of publishers. All of my publishers are great. I’m talking specifically about Little Brown right now because of the Wild Robot books, but I just feel really lucky to have an editor like Alvina who kind of trusts me to follow my imagination and she knows it’ll lead us to interesting places and the whole team of people over there, they help these books be better than they would if I was just trying to figure this stuff out on my own or, you know, so yeah, I think that’s a good takeaway.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, takes a team. Well, Peter, I have loved our discussion today. I’m so glad we got to have it. You know, just a huge fan of your work, as are so many families and teachers and educators. So please don’t stop. Keep doing what you’re doing. And just thanks again for being on the show.

Peter Brown: Thanks, Bianca. Thank you, this has been a lot of fun.