Top children’s author Jon Klassen tells Hongkongers how to write for kids

Jon Klassen was chugging along comfortably as an illustrator for other people’s books – including Caroline Stutson’s award-winning 2010 title Cats’ Night Out – and working as an animator on films such as Coraline.

But when he elected to write and illustrate his own books a few years ago, Klassen never anticipated the response: I Want My Hat Back (2011) and This Is Not My Hat (2012)both sat on the New York Times Bestseller list for more than 40 weeks. Between them, the books have won a host of accolades, sold more than a million copies and have been translated into 22 languages. All for a couple of deceptively simple stories about creatures, and a hat.

“I had no idea that these books would do what they did,” Klassen says from Los Angeles. “You don’t know how it’s going to go over.”

He is preparing to give a talk in Hong Kong on Thursday on the creative process in writing children’s picture books. That’s a somewhat elliptical task to describe, concedes Klassen, who is visiting at the invitation of Bring Me A Book HK, an NGO promoting family literacy in the city.

“I think I’ve gotten better [at talking about it] as the years have gone by – although you always end up coming up with things after the fact that were not part of the process. But I like talking about the construction of both books, what the tricks are, the moments where everything clicked.”

The author-illustrator was born and raised in Canada, but moved to Los Angeles about a decade ago after studying animation. In Hollywood, he worked on the animation for films including Kung Fu Pandaand illustrated children’s books on the side.

“But then I realised I needed to start writing my own books, for both financial and creative reasons.