In "A day when Amos McGee was sick", a fussy zookeeper took bus No. 5 to his work in the zoo at 6 a.m., where he visited his friends-elephants, turtles, penguins, Rhino and Owl-Until one day Amos calls in sick. His animal friends must overcome fear and help Amos recover. Now, the beloved children's book written by married Philip Stead and illustrated by Erin Stead finally has a sequel​​ It is called "Amos McGee Misses The Bus".

PHILIP STEAD: We were not sure at the beginning whether we wanted to re-enter the world of Amos McGee and make a second or third book, mainly because we were not sure what made it so popular. Amos McGee's first book "A Day When Amos McGee Sick" came out in 2010. This is the first book Erin and I collaborated on.

ERIN STEAD: This is my first book.

P STEAD: We really didn't expect anyone to see this book. We really thought we were just making a book for each other, really. So it really relieves a lot of pressure. The only pressure we feel is that we want to make each other happy.

E STEAD: We handed it in. Everyone said that we really like this book, but it is so quiet that no one might see it.

P STEAD: This book quickly became very popular. I think its popularity must surprise us.

E STEAD: When you are sometimes the person who created it, it is difficult to really understand what you did. But the information I gathered from observing its growth in the past 10 years is that many people picked up the book and thought they had read it before and thought it was an old friend. I think this is a very special thing we have to make for people. Finally, after so many years-we have been through difficult years in a row, and the outside world seems to be a bit difficult.

P STEAD: I think it has become more and more mean and unfriendly. We are talking about 2016 and 2017. And more and more, Irene and I want to spend time in a world opposite to this. The world of Amos McGee is just the opposite. In this world, care and kindness are really the rules that all characters follow.

E STEAD: We just want to selfishly live in the world of Amos McGee again, and we want to make this book for ourselves again.

P STEAD: This is really interesting because they are very small books. But if you do it right, you have the hope of creating a whole world in which children can live. So simple questions like what this book says are sometimes really hard to answer, and sometimes make this book sound boring.

Simon: In "Amos McGee Misses The Bus", Amos stayed up late to plan an exciting outing at the zoo for his friends. He got up so late that he missed the No. 5 bus the next morning. He started working late and would not complete all housework in time to carry on his adventures. But his friends didn't even know what Amos' plan was. They stepped in to help him finish the work on time.

P STEAD: So this is not a complicated book. The first book is not a complicated book either. It requires a very simple problem and provides a very simple solution for it. And, really, this book is about how these characters love and care for each other.

E STEAD: So most of my illustrations are printed on woodblock and then drawn on these prints with pencil. The effective method is that I outline what I want the page to look like and the position of all the characters. Then any color you see on the page is carved out of woodblock and printed on the page. I use oil-based ink, so it takes a few days to dry. Then when it dries, I can paint on these colors with a pencil.

P STEAD: The pencil is very, very delicate. So adding color can be very difficult, because the color will overwhelm her very delicate pencil. This is why we ended up using woodblock printing as the main element of color production, because it is very, very soft and very gentle. It matches very, very well with Erin's delicate pencil work.

E STEAD: Also, I want to make some books that you don't really know when they were made. They may have been made a long time ago, or they may have been made yesterday. I want children's books. I made them and I can feel the influence of many generations. I feel that grandparents can read to grandchildren and mothers can read to children. There is a familiar feeling that you read a book when you were a kid. So part of the experience I tried to create in my book came from the palette. And I do use a limited palette, and the colors tend to be a little soft. I want them to feel familiar. I want them to feel like something you already know, or it has even been exposed on your shelf in the past 10 years.

P STEAD: Yes, 14 years ago, when we first started making Amos McGee, I remember our favorite books were books from the 1950s and 1960s. In that era, illustrators often could only use a certain number of colors-maybe two colors and black, or three colors and black. We don't want to be so rigid, but we think, you know, there are some wonderful things about working with restrictions. It sets the parameters for your project and sets the boundaries for your project. Because this is our first book, we can easily get off track, and I think that setting the parameters is very attractive to us, even if they don't need to be there.

E STEAD: In its essence, picture books have their limitations. Because of the way books are bound, almost every picture book you see is 32 pages long. And this restriction actually tends to make us better storytellers. So I think restricting myself will affect this, I only have 32 pages to write this book. I only have 10 colors available for this book. This is only part of my problem solving.

P STEAD: I think that working like that gives feedback to the role in this situation, so-Amos McGee is a very-he is a very kind person, but he is also a very strict person. He does the same thing every day. I think that even something as simple as color selection will give feedback on this.

E STEAD: We once talked with college students. I have a question, that is, what do you want to express in your book? I answered quickly because it is so simple. The emotions experienced by a child are no different from yours. They have indeed experienced losses. They experience love. They experience sadness. So what I do in my art is to try to tap this emotion and build a bridge for them.

P STEAD: As a children's book maker, I often think about the difference between meaning and morality. We really tried very, very hard not to include morality in our book. We don't want our book to teach some kind of lesson. But I do think this book should make sense. The whole book is full of meaning. It's about what you get when you are kind and caring about others, and what you get is what you give.

This is-when Erin and I made the first book, our biggest worry was to make a book well. At the same time, we are creating something meaningful, but we don't really understand it. We must observe the interactions of other people with this book in order to truly understand the meaning of this book. I think one of the most fascinating things about being the creator of anything is that you may not be able to control what it means to people. You have to watch it interact with the wider world to understand.

Simon: Author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead are talking about their new children's book "Amos McGee Misses The Bus" for our series "Picture This".

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