The Winter Child isn't based on a particular folktale, but it's certainly rooted in the great faery lore tradition of the British Isles, and in the scholarship of folklorists ranging from Lady Gregory to Katherine Briggs. Wendy, Brian, and I all have a deep respect for traditional faery lore, and we honor that tradition by shaping ancient lore into new tales for new generations.

It is also our aim to create faery stories that work on several different levels at once. On the simplest level, we hope that children find Sneezle lovable and his adventures entertaining -- but at the same time, our stories and pictures are richly embedded with mythic symbolism that will have a deeper meaning to older readers with an interest in such things.

Do you see Old Oak Wood as a real geographic place?

Old Oak Wood is an imaginary place, but it's inspired by the old, mossy woodlands of Dartmoor in the southwest of England. Dartmoor is a region saturated in folklore and ancient history, full of stone circles, stone rows, Bronz Age ruins, and wild, tangled forests. It doesn't take a strong imagination to envision faeries here!

Why did you choose this environment?

Wendy, Brian, and I all live on Dartmoor, and find great inspiration in its history, myths, and beauty. Sneezle, Twig, and Old Oak Wood grew directly out of our deep love for this region.

Faeries are, in their essence, nature spirits; they are creatures who embody the living soul of the various lands in which they dwell. Whenever I write modern mythic tales -- whether they're set in the woods of England or the southwestern deserts of America -- the land itself shapes the stories, just as it shaped the ancient myths at their core. This is true for Wendy and Brian's work too -- their art is a direct response to the land around them.

Titania and Oberon are the two of the best known faeries of British faery lore, popularized (but not invented!) by William Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I've always particularly liked Shakespeare's depiction of them as passionate but quarrelsome lovers--which is far more interesting to me that other renditions of faery royalty as merely cold and heartless. I don't believe faeries are heartless; it's simply that their lives and thus their motivations are sometimes very different than our own, which often renders their actions perplexing or incomprehensible to humans.

Titania and Oberon made their first appearance in our previous book, "A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale." The book wasn't based on Shakespeare's faery play, but I certainly enjoyed sprinkling the story with Shakespearean references. There are even a few nods to Shakespeare's play "The Winter's Tale" in our new book, The Winter Child...though it may take careful reading to spot them! For instance, while I was writing The Winter Child, I had a quote from the play tacked above my desk: "Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens to be thy nurses." It was this line that inspired the scene in which Sneezle and Twig fly up to the borrower's nest and find.... well, I won't say, in case you haven't read the book yet!

I think Wendy is, quite simply, one of the very finest mythic artists in the world today. Her overall body of work (of which this book is but a small example) is not only technically very beautiful, but it's spiritual and intellectual as well, in addition to being grounded in Wendy's wide-ranging knowledge of myth, symbolism, art history, and literature. Although she's creating imagery aimed at children here, much of which is comic or adorable, she brings an overall seriousness to the creation of Old Oak Wood--she never "talks down" to children in her work. Sneezle may sometimes be funny or foolish, but at his core he's a noble being.

It's quite exciting to be able to give voice and personality to Wendy's creations -- and equally exciting when it works the other way around and a character who first appears in my text is brought to three-dimensional life by Wendy. These books have become so mixed between characters Wendy first thought of, and ones that I first thought of, and ones that Brian first thought of, and even ones that their son Toby first thought of, that it's not always easy to remember now which was which in the beginning. That's the mark of a good creative collaboration, when it all flows together seamlessly.

What is the most challenging part for the writer in creating this type of book?

The most challenging part of writing the Old Oak Wood books is fitting the stories around the pictures, getting as many different dolls into the story as possible to highlight the glorious range of Wendy's work without ending up with a tale that's *too* episodic: "They did this, then this, then this...." It's also my job to find clever ways to incorporate the various props that Wendy and Brian would like to use in the pictures. For instance, after a trip to Amsterdam, they came back with a pair of wooden shoes --and it was then my task to find a way to write them into The Winter Child! Compared to other things I've written, these books feel more like putting jig-saw puzzles together, making sure all the pieces fit. That means they take more time to write than other books...but Sneezle is worth spending time with.

In doing such intensely collaborative work, the text needs to stay flexible because things tend to change and evolve as the sets are created and the photographs are shot. Props can be suddenly added or subtracted; clothing or another element might change, a new angle might suddenly present itself. When all the photographs are done, I go back into the story one more time to change anything in the text that no longer matches up to pictures. Thus the book is a real group creation -- as a writer, you can't remain attached to your own little piece of it, but have to throw your individual ego out the window, trust in the collective vision. Working with the wrong people, that would be a recipe for disaster -- but with the right people (in this case, two people I greatly admire, and completely trust) it makes for pure magic, and the book takes on a life of its own.

In a time of so much electronic entertainment, why is an illustrated book like THE WINTER CHILD special for today's children?

I think the special quality of this book is that it features dolls -- unique, hand-made, one-of-a-kind dolls, made by an artist, not generated by machine. Kids know the difference. There is heart, and spirit, in those dolls. That's why Sneezle seems so *real* to children.

I have nothing against electronic entertainment -- but sometimes children want and need a more intimate, one-on-one experience, as the recent popularity of the Harry Potter books have proven. "The Winter Child" wasn't created by a committee of businessmen, as so many films and television programs are these days -- it was created by three people who are friends and neighbors in a very magical place. The book grows out of our direction connection to the land we live in and its faery traditions --which is an intimate, one-on-one connection that we hope we can impart to our young readers.