Chris Van Dusen: Hi, my name is Chris Van Dusen. I'm the author-illustrator of the children's picture book If I Built a School. This book was inspired by the kids themselves, students themselves. What would happen is I would go around to visit schools before the pandemic. And a lot of times I'd read one of my earlier books, If I Built a Car, or If I Built a House. And, when I came home a lot of times, had received packages in the mail from the kids who I had just visited. And what they had done has been inspired by the car and the house book. And they usually produce their own version of If I Built a School.

Now, I hadn't mentioned that book to them. I hadn't mentioned that I was thinking of writing it. They had no idea that it was in my mind. And I received, over the years, probably about eight to 10 different versions from different schools of If I Built a School. So, it was really the kids who were prompting me and just kind of kicking me a little bit and saying, "Come on, you got to write this book." And so that's really what inspired it.

The most fun part was just letting my imagination run wild and that's what I try to do when I do these books is I get an idea and I try to push it as far as it will go. For example, in If I Built a School, in the gymnasium, there's a perimeter pool. It's almost like a big, deep lap pool that kids race these underwater bicycles in. And it's actually my favorite part of the book. But when I was thinking about the gymnasium, I wanted to do something a little different than any other gymnasiums. And I thought, well, it'd be really cool to have a pool at your school gymnasium, but you find pools at YMCAs and all sorts of centers like that. So I wanted to make it a little bit different and I thought, what if the pool is just like an oval and you just swim around in this oval? Well, that's better, but if we push it even one step further and I came up with the idea of you're still getting exercise because you're underwater on bicycles. And I thought that's perfect. That's what you got to do. So I'm just taking an idea. I'm pushing it a little bit farther, a little bit farther, a little bit farther, and letting my imagination run wild. And that's where I came up with the ideas for the school.

So when I do a book, usually I have to write the words first. A lot of people ask what comes first, the words or the pictures? I really have to write the complete story before I do any sketches. But a lot of times, when I'm planning out the book, I will do these tiny little thumbnail sketches of what I envision the spread to look like. After I've written the story, then the sketching process and that usually takes a long time because I try to make each sketch as exciting, or each scene as exciting as possible and try to show kids things they haven't seen before from a different angle maybe. So sometimes I will sketch a spread eight, ten times before I get just right. The illustrations in If I Built a School were particularly tricky because things like the gymnasium, I thought, how am I going to show everything I've included in the text in the illustration? And so that went through several different versions of sketches.

Once I get a sketch that I really like, I kind of tightened it up and then I submit it to the publisher. Sometimes they make changes, usually, they're pretty good, they usually say, "Yeah, this looks great." And then from there, once I get the approval, then I go to final art. All the illustrations in all my books are painted. I don't use a computer. They're painted with a paint called gouache. And I tell kids that rhymes with squash. All the illustrations are paintings, and, each painting, depending on how detailed they are, they may take anywhere from one to five weeks for one particular painting. So a book takes a long time.

This is an excerpt from my book If I Built a School: Jack, on the playground, said to Miss Jane, This school is okay, but it's pitifully plain. The builder who built this, I think should be banned. It's nothing at all like the school I have planned. If I built a school, the first thing you'd meet are lots of cute puppies! They'd flock to your feet! But why stop at puppies? Why not a whole zoo? So I'd add a bunch of big animals too!

Right off the lobby, to get to your class, I'd set up a system of tubes made of glass. You hop in the pod, press the number, then ZOOM! In under ten seconds, you're right at your room!

All of the classrooms are built onto towers that sprout from the schoolyard like colorful flowers. And like giant petals that welcome the day, the roofs open up in a similar way. Panels fold back and they let in the sun, which frankly makes being there that much more fun.

Now come see your classroom. Isn't it grand? That free-floating platform is where you would stand. And using a stylus, you write in the air. No blackboard. No whiteboard. No, nothing is there. Your words just appear and they magically glow. (Don't ask how this works 'cause I don't really know.)