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NEW YORK -- When Mo Willems, an author and illustrator of children's books, was 6, he loved the comic strip Peanuts "more than anything," so he wrote to its creator:
"Dear Mr. Schulz: Can I have yur job when you die? Yur fan, Maurice Charels Willems."
When Charles Schulz died in 2000, Willems phoned his father, a potter in New Orleans, to remind him of the letter.
His father confessed that he never mailed it. "A classic Charlie Brown moment," Willems says with a smile.
No one will replace Schulz, Willems says: "He created an industry." But at 38, Willems is doing well in what he once dreamed of: making a living drawing stories.
And like Schulz's famous character Charlie Brown, Willems often deals with failure and frustration, but in a way that makes kids, and even parents, laugh.
In the past two years, he has won two Caldecott Medals, one of the top prizes for illustrated children's books. He won in 2004 for Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, the first in a series about a curious but frustrated bird, and last year for Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, about a misplaced stuffed animal.
He published two more books last month: Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! (Hyperion, $12.99), and for older readers, You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons (Hyperion, $12.99), a diary in cartoon form of his post-college, yearlong, no-frills trip around the world.
Willems, however, was no overnight success. Even after he won six Emmys as a writer and animator for Sesame Street, it took two years to find a literary agent and another two years to find a publisher.
He says there is an aversion to exposing children to failure.
Schools and Sesame Street, he says, "tell kids that everyone can be No. 1. That's statistically impossible. I'm not writing for No. 1. I'm writing for No. 2 to No. 2,977, which happens to be a much larger audience."
He describes himself as a "cartoonist who makes books, not an illustrator or an artist." He says, "Anyone who can create shapes and put them together in the right order can draw a cartoon."
At schools and libraries, Willems teaches children to draw their own pigeons: "I encourage them to infringe on my copyright." He says he's proud that his drawings are simple enough to be copied by a 5-year-old.
Young fans send him ideas for the series, including Don't Let the Pigeon Operate the Catapult and Don't Let the Pigeon Audit Its Neighbor.
Willems has a live-in inspiration: his 4-year-old daughter, Trixie, whose misadventure with a stuffed rabbit led to Knuffle Bunny.
"It's her favorite book," her father says, "because she's the star."
Willems, who also created Cartoon Network's Sheep in the Big City and was the head writer for the network's Codename: Kids Next Door, says the best part of being a full-time writer is working at home in a spacious, sunny studio in Brooklyn.
As if on cue, Trixie enters the room to announce that she and Mom are leaving for gymnastics class and to kiss her dad.
"See?" Willems says. "That wouldn't happen if I was in some office."
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