According to Mo
Jessica Rae Patton, Associate Editor

To read Mo Willems' interview click here.

On auditioning for Sesame Street: We asked Mo what was entailed in applying for a coveted job as a writer for the television program Sesame Street. "It was a sort of a long and arduous process. The audition process took about eight months. All the candidates were put in a room together – 12 or 15 men and women. We initially wrote a couple bits, then moved on to two or three bits, then finally wrote an audition script." We were told, 'One of you might make it, or maybe five of you will, or none of you ...' We really had no idea what our chances were, but they finally took a risk on me. I was pretty young at the time – I got hired around my 25th birthday. I was hired as a filmmaker and a scriptwriter in the same season. It was fairly unusual. It felt great. At the time, I had a job at Beavis & Butthead! I think I'm the only guy whose name appeared in the credits of Sesame Street and Beavis & Butthead at the same time!

On writing for children: Does Mo think he eventually would have written children's books if he hadn't worked at Sesame Street? "I don't know...I learned so much about writing for children because of all of the seminars I attended and the education in child development I received while at Sesame Street. It wasn't all stuff I agree with, but it was a great education."

"I think if you want to draw and be funny for a living, on a certain level you're destined to write for children. And I think working for Sesame Street made me actually want to do it and enjoy doing it. There are other people who write for children because they're frustrated artists or illustrators and they can't reach an adult market. I think I'm at a place now where I could write for adults more often than I do, and I choose not to. I think I went into it like, 'I've got a job in television; I get to draw; it happens to be for a children's audience.' By the time I was through the process, I liked writing for children."

More on the pigeon: Kids can't seem to get enough of Mo's cute and conniving pigeon character. "I've got reams of books that kids have made and sent me that are just hilarious." One is, Don't Let the Pigeon Go Out on a Date. Kids seem to use the bird to speak through. I think part of its appeal is that the bird acts like they do, but it's an adult bird, not a kid. He's obviously not a kid – at least to me."

"The pigeon has been in every single book that I've made, including the travelogue. (You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day [Hyperion, 2006] is Mo's first published book for adult readers.) I swear he sneaks onto the pages in the middle of the night. I'm working on a series of early readers about a pessimistic elephant; the pigeon may not be able to squeeze in to those, because they are very clean and specific. But he's tried. He may yet succeed!"

Everyone's an illustrator. Mo loves nothing more than encouraging children to take ownership of their artwork. "I say to kids, 'Do you guys like to draw? Do you like to tell stories? Well, now we have something in common. We are both author-illustrators.' And being an author/illustrator is the only thing that you can do for real as a child. You can't be an astronaut if you're in first grade. You can't be a lawyer. It's the only thing, except being an athlete. And I think being an illustrator and an athlete is the same thing, because you're training your muscles to do what your eye wants it to do. But you can't really be a musician as a young child, because in music there are wrong notes. In drawing, there are no wrong drawings. It's impossible. So that opens up the field."

Mo' to come. Mo is at work on a Knuffle Bunny sequel, for which he again incorporates drawings with photographs, and will only disclose that the book is "about a case of mistaken identity." Just out is Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct (Hyperion, 2006) about a cookie-baking dinosaur in a straw hat and pearls and an unhappy little boy determined to prove her non-existence. And there are 1,001 ideas germinating in the notebooks that Mo always has close at hand. He leafed through one, narrating as he rapidly flipped the pages: "Monsters in underpants. This is an elephant dressing up for a party...this is a pigeon book idea...This is a very cool bicycle...here's a fairy – two fairies, and two magic wands. Some of these will turn into stories and some won't." We can hardly wait.

For a downloadable teacher's guide, a "How to Draw the Pigeon" page and more, go to http://www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com/board/displaybook.asp?id=1351 And, be sure to visit http://www.mowillems.com for more Mo.

To read Mo Willems' interview click here.