This interview originally appeared in the January/February 2025 Horn Book Magazine as part of the Publishers’ Previews: New Books for Emerging Readers, an advertising supplement that allows participating publishers a chance to each highlight a book from its current list. They choose the books; we ask the questions.

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For Earl & Worm: The Bad Idea and Other Stories, author-illustrator Greg Pizzoli considers a new take on an early-reader staple, the unlikely best friends.

Photo: Alice Lee.

1. What beginning-reader book do you remember most fondly?

I show Arnold Lobel’s chaotic, morose, hilarious Owl at Home to kids all the time. I love Frog and Toad. But Owl at Home is Lobel’s secret best book, and in particular the story “Strange Bumps” floored me as a kid. It’s a rare book that expects kids to outwit the main character, but even rarer for one to do it in an authentic way that does not condescend.

2. Why a bird? Why a worm?

The early bird gets the worm! One day, “Earl E. Bird” appeared in my sketchbooks, and soon after, a cranky worm showed up too. It’s a friendship born of conflict, and I think their inherent differences make them more interesting.

3. Which is more difficult for you in creating a book, the beginning or the end?

Endings, probably? The Earl & Worm books are different from others I’ve made as they each contain three separate stories. Each story has a beginning, middle, and end, but I also wanted the whole book to have a flow and an arc that feels satisfying whether you are reading one story, two, or all three.

4. Whom would you imitate if you thought you could get away with it?

I’ve tried my best to imitate artists who are able to reinvent themselves and their style in a way that seems effortless, unexpected, and obvious. I’m talking Maurice Sendak, Tomi Ungerer, Ed Emberley. My two favorite contemporary illustrators might be Zeloot and JooHee Yoon, and I look to their work for inspiration.

5. What poem can you read “again and again and again”?

Does “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” count? Because that gets sung in our house at least twice a night as we put our daughters to bed. That aside, my eldest frequently asks to hear the nursery rhyme “I Had a Little Doggy” from a collection illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. We read together every night, and Earl and Worm were born from that experience. It is my hope that they find a place in many bedtime routines.

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