Mo Willems confesses that his ambition as a child was to take over for Charles Shultz. When he was six years old, he wrote the the master cartoonist:
- "'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. "
Very cute. But Willems has made it in his own right as children's writer/illustrator, though, as he tells Minzesheimer, he's a "'cartoonist who makes books, not an illustrator or an artist.'"
Willems is also a member of the Hot Men of Children's Literature, as designated by A Fuse #8 Productions.
