I don't make plans. All my life, one artistic impulse has simply led me to another.

I am fascinated by the act of making something real that at one point is only an idea. It is challenging and beguiling to sense something inside, put it on paper (or carve it in stone), and then step back and see how much has got lost in the process.

It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.

I sculpted for four or five years. Mostly for my own amusement, I decided to do a picture book, and that was kind of a turning point.

I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head.

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.