Email gets a bad rap. Well, actually, it might be largely deserved, but that’s not the fault of email itself. Everyone loves the ding of a good email showing up. A unique part of being a writer is waiting a long time for an email only to have it be a rejection. Writers, then, especially need some nice emails. Long story short, Mitch Nobis wanted more good emails, and because he also likes interviewing writers, Inbox Wisdom: Email Interviews on Creativity was born.

Adam Rex is the author and illustrator of more than forty books for kids.

These include New York Times bestselling picture books like Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and School’s First Day of School, (with illustrator Christian Robinson). His work has been adapted for film and television.

He’s won some awards, including the Margaret Wise Brown Prize in Children’s Literature and the National Cartoonists Society Book Illustration Award. His debut novel was shortlisted for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

He used to make art for games like Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Sometimes he still does.

He lives in Tucson, Arizona, with his dog, son, and wife.

(https://www.adamrex.com/about)

[Interviewer’s Note: It took me a while to get these interviews posted. Back when I interviewed Adam in the spring of 2025, Echo was his new book, but now his first Christmas book is available here also!]

You’ve written books, illustrated books, and written and illustrated books. How do find those three approaches similar and different? Is your creative process largely the same regardless of the medium, or is it a fresh journey every time? 

It’s often a fresh journey, and I do what I can to keep it fresh. Sometimes that means trying to tackle or even invent an entirely new way of doing things, but more often it’s about trying to inject extra challenges and surprises into my process. 

Like, lately while (digitally) painting I’ve been starting with a loose black and white study, just to get my light and dark values clear, because that’s something I haven’t always been best at. But the twist is I haven’t actually been painting in black and white, I’ve been selecting colors from a color palette with the hues hidden so I *see* it as greyscale. Does this make any sense? Then I turn the color back on and see what I’ve done, and I’ve invariably painted this garish picture, a picture where none of the colors make sense, but which nonetheless looks kind of good because all the light/dark values are correct.

Then I layer “normal” colors over the top, but let some of those wild colors show through, which results in a painting that’s vibrant and surprising to me, and who doesn’t want to surprise themself at the age of fifty-one after thirty years of professional illustration? No idea if anyone else likes what I’ve been doing, though. You can see what it looks like in my newest picture book, ECHO.

Anyway, I didn’t really answer your first question. Of course writing is not exactly like illustrating, but your question does make me realize it all feels like kind of the same thing in my head—just the hopeless, Sisyphean attempt to imagine something heartfelt and beautiful and then push it bit by bit into the world.

I’ve seen you mention that in your newsletter before, and it’s such a startlingly great idea. I love the way it allows you to surprise yourself. I write fiction and poetry, and I wish we had an equivalent in text-only fields like that. Poets can change forms–go from free verse to a sonnet, for example–but even then you’re sticking to an established format of some kind. Anyway, I’m just whining with jealousy, really, because I think that’s such a cool idea. 

I hadn’t thought about that before, but now I’m trying to think of the closest equivalent to the writer. It reminds me of an Exquisite Corpse kind of thing, but that’s collaborative. Or writing while forcing yourself to only use one of the three words your computer is auto-suggesting. Like,

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a kid in the center of town and we have to go out for dinner.

So. Maybe not that.

Your new book Echo looks great! I first stumbled onto your work about 15 years ago. I had moved to Farmington a couple years earlier and was then a new parent. We had one of those cool discount bookstores at the time–the sort of place that sells overruns and remaindered copies for $6 and the like. We bought a lot of picture books for our baby there. It was great because they’d have big famous books next to something you’d never hear of if it weren’t on the shelf in front of you. Like, they’d have some bizarre photo book of an unknown baseball team’s mascot next to Dr. Seuss next to your book Tree Ring Circus, which quickly became our first Adam Rex book! It’s a wonderful and funny book. So much of your work is hilarious, and a lot of artists find it hard to be funny. How do you make sure the work is funny to the audience? Do you read early drafts to a room of second graders like how a comedian works open mics while workshopping a standup routine? Or are you just naturally great at this and trust your hunches? 

I don’t know—the only workshopping I do is occasionally asking my wife which version of a sentence is funnier, and then reading her two versions so similar I have to repeat them three times before she notices the difference. I make her do the same thing with illustrations, toggling between choices that are like the last two pictures your optometrist shows you before writing your prescription.

I’ll leave it to others to decide if this means I’m any good at writing humor or not. But the truth is, I’m always trying to make something I’d want to read myself. I’m trying to make myself laugh—which does happen, if rarely. My consideration of the audience comes in as a set of restraints, really. How can I still make myself laugh while avoiding these words I don’t think second graders will understand, or these topics that aren’t suitable. How can I build touching relationships while keeping things moving. How can I satisfy myself with the plot without getting too byzantine.

Making books for strangers is like I drew your name out of a hat and now I’m your Secret Santa—trouble is, I don’t know you. So I could give you something safe I think everybody likes, or…I could give you something I love. And then if it turns out you love it too, we’re friends.

I love that last answer. Publishing really can feel like drawing a Secret Santa name and then just crossing your fingers really, really hard while they read what you gave them. Of course, different readers take work in different ways, and all you can do is hope for the best. Speaking of different audiences, I love that you work for various age groups, too, with both picture books and also novels for young readers like The True Meaning of Smekday or the Gumluck series. How is your creative process different for the novels than it is for something like your new picture book, Echo? 

Well, when writing a picture book I tend to be a lot more aware of leaving room for the illustrations to help tell the story. I’ve been known to do this with novels as well. For a future Gumluck book I just wrote a scene that I’m going to try to finesse so that a surprise comes in the form of a page turn to a full spread of wordless illustration, rather than description. But it’s a lot more on my mind when I’m sussing out a new picture book.

In general, I think of writing as falling on a spectrum: pure poetry on one end and straight reportage on the other. The former being all feeling, the sounds and rhythms of the words divorced from their meaning. The latter being the meaning of words divorced from their sounds and rhythms. And most everything else falls in-between.

When I’m writing a chapter book or novel, I’m sliding up and down this scale. One line might be written to be musical and metaphorical and evocative. The next might be, “Yes,” she said, because it’d be tedious if they were all musically evocative.

I think what I’m realizing as I answer this question is that I want every line of a picture book not to fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, but rather to hit both extremes at once. To be musical and lovely to say, but at the same time be intensely pithy. And, I mean, good luck, right? But that’s what I’m shooting for. You could have a 500-word picture book be that exquisitely worded. I don’t think I could stomach 50,000 words of it, though.

I love that spectrum idea! I forget the exact wording, but a great piece of writing advice I once received was along the lines of “You get one description per paragraph,” which is ultimately another way of striving for your goal. We want writing to be beautiful but we also need to know what happens next. There has to be balance. You and I have met in real life briefly a couple of times, and I love that you get to do actual in-person book tours sometimes. (That was years ago, pre-Covid, so my kids are monstrously larger than when you met them.) Let’s come back to that idea of balance. How do you balance daily life, creativity, and the business side of a creative life? How do you make room for being a dad and partner, a writer and artist, and someone who occasionally has to fly off to a book tour or teachers conference where you get to sign books and meet super-exciting people like me? (Note: Tongue firmly in cheek there.)

I don’t know if I do a good job of balancing it all, but over time I have to admit my priorities have shifted a lot more to my family. I’m too old to pull all-nighters and I’m a lot more inclined to have to apologize to my publishers than have to apologize to my family. I get requests for school visit trips that often lead to questions like, If our district has you out for two weeks could we get a break on the price? A totally reasonable question, except if I have to leave my family for that long I actually want to charge you *more* money. I *like* my family.

I totally hear that. It’s on a much smaller scale, sure, but I’ve also turned down opportunities in recent years because parenting comes first. That reminds me of a huge “Aha” moment: Covid was a jarring event for me, but in a different way than most people talk about it. Obviously, the death and suffering are the biggest issues with Covid, but on a smaller, personal level, I was stunned by how many people wanted–nay, demanded–a return to normal as soon as possible because they didn’t want to be around their own kids all day. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I liked being home with my family. There were these few incredible months where I was teaching over Zoom and could hear my kids and my wife down the hall, each of us in a room and on Zoom teaching or learning. (Granted, we’re lucky that we have a suburban house that allowed for each of us to have a space.) I fed off that. I loved hearing my kids laugh, hearing my wife be the amazing teacher that she is but in a new format, asking them all about classes at lunch, and so on. It somehow made me MORE creative. Do you feed off your own family creatively? Because I’ve read most of your books, I know this is ultimately a yes, so rather I’ll ask HOW does your family enter into your creative life and work?

Well, I’ll admit up front that I might not have had as positive a Covid experience as you did. I think my son and I, particularly, found out we might not do so well in a lifeboat together. I love him but I did not love being his teaching assistant.

But sure, of course they enter into my creative life. Every wise, kind woman I write is secretly my wife. I get all kinds of kid characteristics from my son. And that goes all the way back to when he was a baby. When we first adopted him and learned how vigorously he rolled as he slept, I started calling him Tumblebaby and got an entire picture book out of that.

Henry is not a big drawer, and even when he drew more often he tended to draw things I wouldn’t have thought to make when I was his age: maps, floor plans, systems. Before becoming a father I think I’d expected hours of my kid and me drawing on the living room floor together; giving each other subjects; maybe even some amount of instruction, if he was interested. That never really came to pass, so it was with some surprise a few weeks ago that Henry, who just turned thirteen, asked if he could design a Fortnite-type character and then have me draw it more realistically. I’m not exaggerating when I say nothing like this had EVER HAPPENED BEFORE, and it was the most nerve-racking drawing of my life, I wanted so badly to please him. Since then I’ve noticed Henry taking his own notice of what I’m working on more often, and telling me what he likes.

That’s a long digression. I don’t expect Henry to suddenly become hugely invested in what I do, or want to do it himself. But I wonder if he’s crossed some mental line where he’s stopped thinking of my work as simply The Thing Dad Does All Day and maybe started thinking of it as something he can engage with more.

Oh man, that’s a wonderful moment. People don’t think of writers and artists as “the family business,” but they certainly can be. One of Stephen King’s kids became a highly regarded writer, for example. I come from a family farm background, and–obviously because I’ve already mentioned I’m a teacher–I didn’t go into the family business. I did work there during school breaks both as a student and for the first at least five years as a teacher. Maybe more. While I’m sure my dad might wish I had entered the family business, I’d like to think he has good memories of when my brother and I were both working there, at least. I guess I’m saying I hope the same is true for you and Henry, that even if he doesn’t embrace art himself, that you two can have some shared experiences around it. I also didn’t know you’re an adoptive dad. (Or if I did, I forgot because my memory is weakening like Superman sitting on a boulder of kryptonite.) Same here! 

Our conversation about parenthood and creativity makes me think about the way time passes and what it does to us (in various ways, I suppose). I mentioned earlier that my family first found you through Tree Ring Circus, which at this point would be considered one of your early books. How do you find your creativity and/or creative practices have changed with a little aging? How did your creative process change from, say, your early twenties to now? No need to give away your actual age–it’s enough to say we found Tree Ring Circus probably 14 years ago, give or take. 🙂 For example, you mentioned earlier that you invent new ways of working to force yourself to keep things fresh. Is this a result of being at the desk for some number of years now, or have you always tinkered with your processes? 

I was actually just thinking about how the digital process has changed how I sketch.

I sort of miss keeping a sketchbook. I’ve filled a dozen over the years, I’m sure, but these days I tend to sketch more on an iPad or even my laptop. I see other people keep these beautiful books filled not only with works in progress but also day to day sketches, observations, daydream stuff. I used to sketch like that. I’m not trying to feel sorry for myself, I just know I’ve gotten into…let’s call it a groove rather than a rut wherein I don’t noodle around because I either know I have something I ought to be working on, or else I feel a pressure to use whatever free time I have to generate something new *and* useful. And by useful I suppose I mean sellable.

If I’m being honest, the weird truth is that I don’t even feel the same urge now to fill my days and sketchbooks with drawings for drawings’ sake. As with so many things, I wonder if I don’t really miss keeping a sketchbook so much as I miss being the person I used to be. Someone who drew for fun.

Anyway. I was trying to answer your question. So when I started every new composition and project with sketches on paper, I necessarily had to begin with a lot of thumbnail iterations if I wanted to get to something good. Like, I had to forcibly prevent myself from getting too detailed with initial sketches, because why get invested in the features of a face on a body in a composition that turns out flat and uninteresting? I’d doodle loose gestures until I felt like I was on the right track. Then I’d doodle more iterations of the thumbnail that was working until I’d refined it into something that felt solid. THEN I’d draw it larger and start thinking about detail, and then I’d probably draw it again.

This is so boring. My point, like a vanishing point on the horizon that never draws nearer, is that digital sketching allows me to refine the same loose sketch—pushing and pulling it, rotating, erasing, warping and redrawing—until it’s a tight sketch composed just so. It’s like I used to chisel marble, and the corner of my studio was piled high with rough failures. And now I work in clay.

I didn’t find that boring at all! I love how your response pulls back the curtain a bit for the artist’s life, too. The work is creative, but it also still becomes work, especially when that’s how the bills get paid. When I was a classroom teacher, I’d mention pretty regularly how even Shakespeare paid the bills by accepting commissioned work sometimes. I also love the existential point here about how we change over time and regardless of genre, at some point probably every creative person wishes they could recapture the feeling of our earlier work. Sometimes a degree of blissful ignorance leads to freer creative output. Or something like that. 

This has been great, but I do hope to keep these interviews relatively short. So, last question. Can you tell us about your recent books and maybe what we should look for soon in the bookstore from you? 

I’m hugely proud and invested in these chapter books I’ve been writing and illustrating about a silly little wizard, the Gumluck series. I think they’re really funny, in a way that’s both accessible to six year-olds but also satisfying for their caregivers, but they’re more than that. They are my whole heart transliterated onto the page. I’m tempted to say that if you don’t like them, you don’t like me.

I’ve published three so far, and I talked Chronicle into letting me do two more, and then I guess we’ll see. If they keep selling, I think I’d like to keep making them forever. You don’t really need to read them in order and I think the third one is the best so far. It has a chapter with a hoard of goblins singing a kind of Gilbert and Sullivan song that begins, “I am a major miner and the mine I mine is mine,” and maybe your interest in this sentence so far is a good predictor of how much you’d like the whole series. I don’t know.

Later this year I’ll publish my first Christmas picture book! The 13th Day of Christmas is about the guy who got all those impractical gifts from his true love, and how it ruined his life, and then how it unexpectedly made him the happiest man on earth.

I love that last reply, and I look forward to Gumluck forever! Best of luck with the Christmas book too, and thanks again for doing this interview series, Adam.

Inbox Wisdom is an interview series conducted by Farmington writer Mitchell Nobis. He is the author of The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees (Match Factory Editions, 2025). He also hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series for KickstART Farmington, facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project, and co-founded the Not at AWP (NAWP) reading series. For more, see mitchnobis.com.