Where My Ideas Came FromThe idea for Today is the Birthday of the World came during a Rosh Hashanah service. I heard the words "Today is the birthday of the world. Today all of God's creatures pass before God..." and I realized that children would adore this procession. And such an all-inclusive parade seemed the perfect illustration of the idea that every living creature has a vital contribution to make if our world is to flourish. My grandparents died before I was born. When I was a child my parents told me they'd crossed the Atlantic in steerage. I knew little else about them and yearned to know more. In the end I read history books, visited Ellis Island and wrote my own tale. When I illustrated The Castle on Hester Street I modeled the grandfather after my father and the grandmother after my father's mother. Boris Kulikov illustrated the 25th Anniversary Edition and his talent as a set designer coupled with the fact that he, like my grandparents, emigrated from Russia gave the new edition a dazzling sense of place.I loved to read as a child and my favorite books were about large happy families. I never saw myself in any book though and later when I had the opportunity to write and illustrate children's books I put myself in Lily at the Table and Horace Morris. These days I'm working on texts that will tell children about the happy world I eventually found.I've just completed a heartening non-fiction book for adults filled with interviews with people who transformed their pain into joy. This work was fueled by my desire to learn to trust and welcome whatever came my way.