India, Aug. 23 -- 1You have won the prestigious Caldecott Medal twice, for your books Hello Lighthouse and Finding Winnie. What does the medal represent to you? The wonderful thing about the Caldecott Medal is the big gold sticker you get on your book. That is much more important than the actual medal! It is a sign to parents, teachers, librarians and children that the book they are holding in their hands is a good book. As a child, I used to look out for books that had those gold stickers. The medal carries a great legacy, and I am just one in a long line of other illustrators who have won it. 2Tell us about the making of Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear, and about working with Lindsay Mattick. Lindsay, who wrote the book, is the great-granddaughter of Captain Harry Colebourn, the soldier who adopted an orphaned bear cub in Winnipeg and named her Winnie. The bear ended up at the London Zoo during World War 1, and that is where AA Milne, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, used to take his son Christopher Robin. The father and son met the bear. This bear became the inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh. Lindsay had this family connection to the story, and I did a lot of research too while working on the book. I went to the London Zoo. I wanted to see it in person to make the illustrations as accurate as I possibly could. Working on this book was a wonderful ride because Winnie-the-Pooh is still one of my favourite books. It is wise, wonderful, funny and true. I loved it so much as a child. I think I must have been around seven years old when I sat up in a tree reading that book and looking at the illustrations by EH Shepard. It was then that I thought, "One day I would like to do this." I realised that making books is a job; people do it for a living. I too could do it! 3How did you come to set up Milkwood Farm, your retreat for authors and illustrators? Wherever we are in our life journey, we all need support and community. I realised soon enough that the whole experience of running Milkwood Farm with my husband, Ed Schmidt, who is a playwright, is also quite selfish. I do it because of how happy it makes me. Giving always makes people happy but not everybody realises that until they actually do it. Milkwood is 20 acres of wildflower meadows and hardwood forest in a valley in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. It is named after a play called Under Milk Wood, written by Dylan Thomas. We have an open-plan studio, vegetable gardens, fruit trees, walking paths by a stream, a farmhouse kitchen, communal tables, a library, picnic benches, a stone fireplace, a bar, a barbecue area. We have poured love and hard work into making it a comfortable and inspiring place. Before it got converted into a creative retreat, it was a dairy farm, from the 1850s until 2006. I must confess that, sometimes, I feel a bit of envy when people come to Milkwood to just think or write or draw, and have all this time for creative exploration!...