When I went through university in the '70s, I intended to become a newspaper reporter but my career didn't work out the way I planned it. By the time I graduated from journalism school, many of Canada's largest papers had closed down, so instead of reporting, I took a job working on a geographic magazine in Ottawa, even though I knew little about geography or science.

That is when I discovered that if I worked hard enough I could learn just about anything and even find ways to explain it to other people. I spent three years editing stories by professional geologists, geographers and biologists, but in 1978, I left that job and moved to the country.

That was the year I convinced a rural magazine called Harrowsmith to hire me as an editor. Thinking it was a temporary move away from the city, I rented a big old stone schoolhouse in a small village and began to find out about life in the country.

During those years, I met a cartoonist named John Bianchi, a freelance artist who could find the humour in any editorial subject. John's cartoons were so funny that his work appeared in nearly every issue of Harrowsmith.

One day, he told me that he really wanted to write and illustrate children's stories, books that were a little bit weirder than most publishers wanted. I suggested we start our own company to publish his first story, The Bungalo Boys: Last of the Tree Ranchers in 1986. Bungalo Books was born. Once again, I had found something new to learn: how to start a company and introduce our books to kids across North America.

I also learned how to write my own stories. While I was used to writing long magazine articles and editing books with tens of thousands of words in them, I began to work on stories that only had a few hundred words and lots of art.

Since John and I began working together, we have created more than 20 Bungalo Books and have almost 1.5 million copies in print. Over the years, we have become close friends as well as creative partners who work together daily, sharing ideas, giving each other advice and collaborating on stories. When John and his family decided to move to the desert in Arizona, we knew that we could still work together every day, thanks to computers, phones and airplanes. After all, we were only 3,000 miles apart.

Now when we get together, we hike in the beautiful mountains near John's house while we discuss ideas for new projects.

We both have offices in our homes, and our lives are centered around our families. I have a grown-up daughter and two younger children who like to watch me work in my downstairs office. We fool around a lot together, and sometimes I probably spend too much of my time trying to make them laugh. But I love the sound of laughter, especially when it comes from one of our books. I hope that I'll always be remembered for making children and their parents smile when they share my stories at bedtime.

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