They put a stack of books in front of you, and for years I thought picture books were either about girls picking flowers or long-dead white inventors. I couldn't stand them. Then I read Where the Wild Things Are , and it changed the way I looked at books. That's a marvelous thing. But it didn't occur to me how marvelous the writing was until much later.
Writing is hard.
I tend to let the pictures carry the weight when the text should. For the last few years I've been struggling to be a better wordsmith, to balance words and pictures. I've offered it to some talented students in this area. For me, it's coloring in the pictures. I can't spend a year on a book.