Anyone familiar with the Augusten Burroughs oeuvre (eight memoirs, one novel, a self-help book) probably won’t be surprised that his first children’s book has an unconventional title—My Little Thief—and a storyline that’s both funny and morally complex. Chloe, the independent-minded protagonist, has a blossoming friendship with a whip-smart, gift-bearing crow until Crow bestows an earring that he’s stolen from the home of a classmate, and Chloe becomes the prime suspect. PW spoke with Burroughs about what appealed to him about the source material—a true story that went viral in 2015—and what it was like to venture into new literary territory.

While you’ve written vividly about your own childhood, did you ever think you’d write a picture book?

I never did. I had a friend who’s deceased now who wrote picture books and I remember how he worked really hard on them. I thought. “I’m not doing that.” With memoirs, I know my life so well, but it was intimidating to think about writing something for children. It’s one of those things that seemed like it would be easy but it’s more like rocket science.

In 2015 I read a [news] story about a girl who made friends with crows, and the crows brought her gifts. That changed things for me. I’ve always been very close to animals. As a child they were my real friends vs. humans. And when I was much older I experienced the intelligence of birds—it was so striking.

On the surface, the book is about the unexpected friendship that develops between a young person and a crow and how they have each other’s back. But on a deeper level, it’s about autonomy: here’s a girl who has likes and dislikes, she makes choices and they belong to her. And it’s about revising and revisiting firmly held opinions when you’re exposed to new stimuli.

One friend I had as a child—I was eight or nine and living in Massachusetts—was a girl who lived way down the dirt road, who was really tough and really brave, tougher and braver than I was. She introduced me to so much, including rhubarb—it grew wild where she lived and we would sit under the picnic table eating this wildly sour rhubarb. She was the most exciting person. My Chloe is a little bit based on that person—an independent, strong character.

How did the book take shape?

I sat down in the middle of an ordinary day, probably a Tuesday, and just wrote it. And it was much later than 2015 when I did this, like 2018. Writing tends to explode out of me, I just write and boom!—get it out. I showed it to my agent [Christopher Schelling] who’s also my husband now. He does actually represent picture book authors—and he liked it.

But I was apprehensive about publishing a picture book. I didn’t want to write a bad story for children. And because of my success as a memoirist, there was a high likelihood many publishers would want to publish a children’s book by me, whether or not it was well written. It sounds narcissistic, but that’s just a business reality.

This is not my genre, I don’t have connections and friends in it. But as I learned more about that world, I believed there was only one editor [for it] and that was Christy [Ottaviano, who runs an eponymous imprint at Little, Brown]. I thought, “I don’t think she’s going to buy this unless she likes it.” And I was absolutely shocked when she did.

Crow is a thief—but only from a human vantage point. From his perspective, he’s just doing what crows do. That’s a complex idea—how would you like readers to process it?

I want them to process it, but I can’t tell them how. Crow is not aware of human laws and constraints and our moral framework, so Crow won’t have the sense that jewelry belongs to someone else. But Crow is grounded by his own moral compass of love, and knows Chloe will love[the gifts he brings to her], so what he does is an act of goodness—yet it’s a crime.

It definitely brings up issues of perspective, of points of view. It’s a child’s first exploration of relativity. And there’s no guarantee that Crow won’t steal again. It’s just that people will know it’s not Chloe now.

What was the most striking difference from writing your other books?

It’s so much slower than making all my other books. The production takes much, much longer.

We were revising the text until it was no longer possible [because of production deadlines], to make it as smooth, as nutritionally complete and dense as possible. I’m so grateful that Christy would spend so much time for me. She was an amazing editor, and made this story so much better. She never stopped, and I mean that in the best possible way. The story was the same since the first draft, but what came and went were the details. I had to learn not to overwrite.

Even though Crow is only seen in profile, that one bright eye exudes so much crafty intelligence—he’s got a lot of star power. Can you talk about Bonnie Lui’s illustrations?

That one eye is so expressive—it’s not just the eye, it’s also the pitch of the beak. It all adds to the character’s spirit and the intelligence and curiosity.

I love the illustrations. I feel woefully inadequate speaking about illustration, but every time I look at them I notice something new. Christy brought in many, many, many illustrator samples, and one stood out immediately and it was Bonnie. I never met her through the process. I was in advertising for 18 years and I learned to let the artist create the art. I had very few if any directions for Bonnie—all the directions were in the manuscript. I want someone else to bring their perspective the story.

Having worked in advertising, did you test the story idea with any children or parents?

I’ve never asked anybody, “Does this seem good?” There’s no way to write something for someone else. I write for myself, really—it’s what I would like. One thing I have learned in writing eight memoirs—that’s way more than any person should write—is it doesn’t matter what I say, there’s always someone who’s experienced exactly the same thing.

Do you have any more picture books in the works?

When I wrote this one I wrote six others at the same time— wrote them all in one afternoon. A few of them are seeds and others are more complete. But then I keep having other ideas: I’ll go down a TikTok wormhole—I can’t tell you how long I’ve spent looking at videos of people and their pet cows. We’ve been told cows are dumb or slow but they’re really quite aware of what’s going on, and that’s very sweet and provocative.

So can we look forward to an Augusten Burroughs picture book about cows?

You never know.

My Little Thief by Augusten Burroughs, illus. by Bonnie Lui. Little, Brown/Ottaviano, $18.99 Mar. 7 ISBN 978-0-316-37413-2