Pigs came about because I was telling stories in a school way out in the country.
I got the idea of making up a story about farm animals. I said “some of these kids must come from farms and they must have farm animals and they would like a story about farm animals.”
I said “Hey, anybody here live on a farm?” Lots of kids put up their hands. So I chose one girl named Megan and said “Well, what sort of animals are on your farm?” and she said “sheep.” I said “Maybe I can make up a story about that.”
I made up the story of Pigs except instead of pigs it was about sheep. It was so good I got the little girl’s name right away because I knew it might turn into a book.
After two years of telling I started changing around what kind of animals could be in the story. I used chickens and I used cows, and I used horses and donkeys and finally I used pigs.
It turned out pigs worked better than anything else – kids really liked the animals being pigs.
Four years after I originally told the story one day I wrote Meghan and said “Hey this story is going to be a book. If you want to be in a book please send me your picture.”
Well by about that time Meghan was about fourteen but she still thought it was a neat idea. She sent me a picture of herself when she was six years old and that’s the girl that is in the book.
