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MEET DAN HANNA
by Ann Stalcup

What do you think was your most valuable childhood experience?

Dan Hanna

Being bored.  I firmly believe that having enough free time to sit around and be bored is very important for the development of a healthy imagination.

What kinds of things inspire you to work?

I'm primarily motivated by death.  When I contemplate my eventual demise it scares me into action.  Although what really gets me going - is death and a cup of coffee.

Where do you get your ideas?

When kids ask me this question I show them my Idea Sock.  It's a torn up sock stuffed with ideas written on little strips of paper.  I tell them that's where I get all my ideas and I let them pull out a few and read them out loud.  Without my idea sock I'd be toe-tally helpless!

What was your first job when you graduated from college and how soon after that was your first book published?

After college my first job was as a computer programmer.  25 years later The Pout-Pout Fish was published.  I think everything you do in life prepares you to write and illustrate.  From programming I learned the concepts of "Top Down Design" and "Divide and Conquer".  Both have proved invaluable to me throughout my life and across many disciplines.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

THE POUT-POUT FISH:

  - WIGGLED onto the New York Times Bestseller List.

  - SWAM onto Time Magazine's Top 10 Children's Books of the Year.

  - Made a BIG SPLASH by winning Best Picture Book from the Southern California Independent Booksellers.

What do you want the students to get out of your school visits?

That being a writer or illustrator is like being a wizard.  Your magic wand is a pencil.  Your potions are words and scribbles.  And the spells you cast will be the stories you write and the pictures you draw.  So pick up a pencil - and make some magic happen!

Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?

Initially I let my imagination run wild.  Then I knock it out with a tranquilizer dart while I do some research.  Finally, my groggy imagination re-awakes, snarls angrily and then runs wild again.  I've found that this approach works best for me.

What do you think will be the ultimate fate of your work?

Five billion years from now, when our sun has blown up and the Earth is a smoldering chunk of charcoal, humanity will hopefully have escaped to another planet.  Perhaps, packed away in one of the zillions of moving boxes (you can get cheap ones at Office Depot) will be an old, dusty copy of THE POUT-POUT FISH.  Maybe then, some remnant of my wandering soul will smile as a genetically enhanced child stumbles across it and cracks open its ancient spine.