HUMBLE BEGINNINGS: How a brand new character comes to life.

You go to a bookstore or shop online, buy a book, and that's all there is to it. But what people may not realize is the amount of time and energy that goes into crafting the story, developing the character, refining the images, pulling it all together, and then creating the finished product. Here's a little of what it took to land on our character and then it continues to evolve over time. Lots of work, but well worth it.

The original title of the story was "I Can Do Anything. I Can Do It All." If you're at all familiar with our books, you'll recognize this as one principal recurring theme or refrain. It's a positive message that we feel kids can never hear enough, and it reinforces the notion of infinite possibility.

As we worked together as a team to figure out who the character was, what they might look and act like, how they would move throughout and view the world around them, things began to fall into place. We asked questions like "Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Are they twins? Is it an animal? What are they all about?" Then, once we decided our hero should maybe be a heroine, we went through the naming process and landed on Greta. Her last name, though we don't mention it much, is Duzzett, a fictitious proper homonym of "does it," as in anything and everything.