In the years before my godson Anthony began going to school, I started making him small picture books. Here are the first couple of pages from perhaps the first of those books, “Elephant Goes to Christmas.”

Elephant was one of Anthony’s invisible friends at the time. (Now, of course, he has real friends). Eventually he outgrew picture books, and so I decided to write him a “chapter book,” as they were called in school. And so SOCKWORLD was born.

People often ask writers, and other creative sorts, how they get their ideas. It’s a magical thing, but not entirely accidental. There is a famous story about a German chemist, August Kekule, who, in 1865, discovered the ring-shaped atomic structure of benzene because he had a dream about a snake biting its own tail. Now I don’t know about you, but if I had a dream about a snake biting its tail I would not make the mental leap to the atomic structure of benzene. The point is: ideas come to people who are looking for them, or who, because of their experience or training, are able to recognize them when they see them.

I was looking for an idea for a book. One day I got an image in my mind of a boy hearing a voice. I didn’t know who the boy was, or who the voice was, but I immediately recognized this as a powerful dramatic moment, because if you suddenly hear a voice that nobody else can hear you either have to question your sanity, or question whether the world is arranged in the way you thought it was. It is a moment in which everything changes. The story grew from there.