Ann Kim Ha: Hello, my name is Anne Kim Ha, and I am the author and illustrator of Walter Finds His Voice: The Story of a Shy Crocodile.

My daughters were the inspiration for the story. They're both introverts and they feel shy all the time, so, you know, I wanted to write a book to kind of help introverted kids and make them realize and understand that being introverted is okay, and everyone, whether you're introverted or extroverted, has a voice, some just take longer to find this.

Walter Finds His Voice is my first picture book. I'm actually trained as an architect. I worked professionally as an architect for many, many years, and then recently switched over to children's book writing and illustrating.

When I was in architecture school, we did a lot of physical collages, and I was always fascinated with collage work. And I guess further along in my career, everything kind of turned very, like, more work in the computer. So I started getting into just creating collages in the computer. And my process involves really just making watercolor palettes, just sheets of random watercolors and scanning them into the computer, and then just really cutting shapes from those watercolor palettes and assembling and collaging all of those shapes into an illustration.

It was really hard for me because I've never done animals before, I've always worked on buildings and spaces. So getting used to drawing and composing animals was very challenging for me. But then I kind of just simplified the forms, and once I was able to just think of basic, basic forms for animals, it just kind of became a very, very enjoyable and fun process.

The passage that I'm going to read from Walter Finds His Voice: The Story of a Shy Crocodile is when Walter is kind of caught off guard and surprised by his friends who say, "Surprise" because it's his birthday. And Walter goes into his hiding, introverted self mode.

So the words read, "But Walter startles easily. There's nowhere for him to go but down." And these are three pictures that are stuck on top of each other, and it shows Walter being nervous and looking around and slowly sinking into the water until he is completely in the water and hiding.

I'm an introvert, and I feel like Walter all the time, especially when I have to do readings. I would prefer to hide under a table, but I don't because otherwise I wouldn't meet so many wonderful people. And I actually at the end enjoy reading to people and kids. Kids especially. So yeah, everybody has a Walter inside of them.