About five years ago, I wrote my first children's play for the Lander Library: the screwball detective comedy, Of Mysterious Boxes and Spinach.  I played the bad guy (a candy-crazed maniac with a lollipop club who was dead-set on "Taking over the world"). The kids loved her and rolled on the floor laughing at every chase scene... but I always felt that something was wrong.

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For days after the show's run ended, our audience of kindergartners through second-graders sent us dozens of letters thanking the characters and asking them questions. Curiously, one question kept popping up:

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           "Sugur Girl, WHY wer yoo trying too tak over the world?"

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This question got me thinking.  Why was she trying to take over the world? And in an instant, I realized the problem:

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I'd written a crime without a motive. We could laugh at my character, but we couldn't quite care about her. She never felt like a real person--because she didn't have a "WHY."

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The kids who sent those questions set me on a path that, five years later, I am still following.  Should any of them ever happen to read this... THANK YOU!