Jon Klassen: Hi, my name is Jon Klassen. It's pronounced Klassen, almost as if there's a U after the A in Klassen, but there isn't one. I think there used to be. My full name is Jonathon, and I sort of regret some days not putting that on books instead of Jon.

In seventh grade I moved to a new school and I didn't have a lot of friends and the first guy I ever met who was nice and was sort of friendly to me was named Donald. He shortened his name to Don. I'd heard his name was Donald before during attendance and he came up and said, "You can call me Don, though." And it was such a relief that this guy was being friendly and I always thought it was so cool that I could call him Don that that sort of stuck with me. So after that I sort of shortened my name whenever I met anybody to say, "Well, you can just call me Jon." And I always wanted to have that same Donald moment with anybody else.

My parents still call me Jonathon, because my dads name is Jon.