Interview Session: Peter Brown

When Peter visited Lemuria Books back in April, we sat down to talk about his newest book for kids: The Wild Robot. Charting a new path by writing a chapter book, this book is heartfelt, has adorable characters, and full of strange and mysterious things while at the same time feels very familiar. Many thanks to Peter for answering my questions! 

Peter Brown and Clara Martin stand by a life size Roz!

How did you enter the world of children’s books and illustrating books for kids?

PB: I studied animation at the Art Center College of Design. I wanted to make characters come to life. Once I experienced [animation] up close, it was not as comfortable as I thought.

Why did you switch to illustration?

PB: I was studying illustration the whole time, and when I realized that animation wasn’t right for me, I still loved characters and children’s books, so that was a way for me to continue creating characters. My books are like little short films. I’m the director, the costume designer, and I control the lighting.

What are your favorite children’s books?

PB: Frog and Toad Are Friends and Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I fell in love with the Hobbit too. I wasn’t much of a reader, but I loved making stories. Since I wasn’t a fast reader I did not spend as much time reading.

What artists or animators have inspired you?

PB: Eyvind Earle. He was a Disney artist responsible for the look of Sleeping Beauty. His art is so graphic, bold, and textual. He was a real influence on me.

What was your first book?

PB: The Flight of the Dodo. I graduated and moved to New York City and started making picture books for kids. I fell in love with words. Eventually, I fell so in love with words that I made a novel.

That first novel is The Wild Robot. Tell me a little about it.

PB: I first got the idea when I was writing The Curious Garden. The total time to write, from the initial idea to the completed project, was eight years. I spent two-and-a-half years actually working on it. The first years were important.

What was your favorite animal to write about in The Wild Robot?

PB: Roz’s adopted son, Brightbill. Geese are interesting animals because we don’t think of them as such. They have interesting behaviors like migrating and imprinting. A gosling was perfect for my story because in the real world geese can imprint on people, so maybe they can imprint on a robot. I was also able to touch on real human emotions, such as “leaving the nest.”

What surprised you about Roz?

PB: She’s a robot. I was surprised by the similarities between my robot main character and myself. We have to find that little voice in our mind and explore that. I like a strict routine; I’m a creature of habit and a perfectionist, all things in common with Roz.

What upcoming projects do you have next?

PB: A sequel to The Wild Robot. There is no title yet. The second book will be as surprising and intriguing as the first one.

Peter speaks to captivated students at a school.

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

New York Times Bestselling Author Peter Brown ventures into wild territory with the chapter book, and he emerges unscathed. The Wild Robot is a wonderful tale for children with a great moral. We cannot survive without the earth, and in turn, the earth cannot survive if we do not take care of it.

One hurricane. Four crates. Only one washes safely ashore an island. Inside? A robot named Roz. Roz is solar powered and full of “Survival Instincts.” Her shiny exterior is soon marked by scrapes and mud as she traverses over the wild landscape of the island. She cannot understand the language that the animals speak. She discovers ways to camouflage herself so that the animals do not run away in fear of the “monster” on the island.

She began by smearing handfuls of thick mud over her entire body. Then she grabbed clumps of ferns and grasses and sank their roots into her new coat of mud. She placed colorful flowers around her face to disguise her flowing eyes, and any bare patches were covered with pebbles and strips of moss…The camouflaged robot now looked like a great tuft of plants walking through the twilight. She padded to the center of a forest meadow, nestled herself into a hillock, and became part of the landscape.

This disguise offers her the ability to observe the animals and their behavior, and after several weeks of disguising herself as a clump of seaweed or a stone in the forest, she can understand the language of animals. Only once she becomes “one with nature” can she communicate with the animals and speak to them in their own language. After Roz causes a rockslide that leaves a family of geese dead, she rescues the last, small egg. She makes it her mission to ensure that the egg and the gosling inside, survive.

“Mama! Mama!” The gosling thinks Roz is his mother. Roz knows nothing about being a gosling mother, but with help from the other animals, Roz builds a home for herself and Brightbill, the baby goose. Loudwing, the know-it-all goose helps Brightbill swim. Mr. Beaver and his family help build a large robot-sized home out of birch trees, known as the “Nest”. Tawny the deer shows Roz how to garden and grow berries. Chitchat the squirrel is Brightbill’s first friend. These island creatures show that we cannot exist in this world without taking care of the earth, and helping each other. Roz learns that although she has perhaps “higher thinking,” it is the animals, and her adopted son, Brightbill, who teach her what it means to be a part of the wilderness, how important it is to take care of the one earth we are given.

This review originally appeared in The Clarion Ledger.

Signed copies of The Wild Robot can be purchased here.