The Book of Jonah began as a project commissioned by Harper & Row as a children’s book, but it soon became clear to the publisher and to me that the material was more adult oriented. I lost interest in the project and abandoned it until several years later, when the Gulf War broke out. My strong feelings about that conflict made me take up the project again when I projected myself as the protagonist, Jonah, and our government and President Bush as an Old Testament Jehovah.

The picture and hand-written format is something I first did back in 1952, when I wrote and illustrated The Juggler of Our Lady. Coincidentally, it was selected as one of the Fifty Books of the Year.