Character
After I read the manuscript and agreed to illustrate the book, I borrowed my father's raccoon references - books, magazine clippings, photographs, and even the raccoon pelt he had used as a model for Sterling North's Rascal - and started drawing. Soon Little Raccoon's shape and personality began to emerge (influenced by my nephew Sam, my friend Charlotte, and my teddy bear Angus) and I explored his character through his body language and expressions, sketching him in every kind of pose I could conjure up.

Composition
I also started sketching the double-page scenes. At first, these compositions were very small, but if I liked one of these "thumbnail" sketches I would make it bigger and develop the details and arrangements of things in the picture. After all this drawing, I made a pretend book—or “dummy”—by photocopying the sketches, cutting them up, and taping them with the text onto clean pages. This gave me, my editor, and my art director an idea of what the book would look like as a whole.

Color
I made some more changes to the pictures and at last it was time start painting the final illustrations. But I wasn't happy with my first results: Little Raccoon looked dirty and beady-eyed and I realized that I hadn't figured out what color he should be, how big his eyes should be, or what his pajamas should look like. So I experimented again and, when I started over, Little Raccoon took on a warm, almost foxy glow.

Cover
Often, I hold off working on the jacket illustration until I know a book inside and out. But after six months of almost constant painting, I still didn't have many ideas and settled on something that seemed okay–at first. The picture made it all the way to proofs, but then my publisher had second thoughts about it. Luckily, I did, too. So although I had to redo the jacket, by then I could attack it with renewed energy and I think I came up with a much stronger painting.