A podcast interview with Jon Agee discussing George and Lenny Are Always Together on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.
An intimate conversation with award-winning author-illustrator Jon Agee about his heartwarming new picture book, George and Lenny Are Always Together.
In this delightful episode, Agee shares the creative journey behind his bear and rabbit duo who must navigate the delicate balance between togetherness and independence—a theme that resonates with readers of all ages. He opens up about his fascinating creative process, from guarding story ideas like “living little creatures” to his traditional art techniques, and reveals how his stories have evolved.
Whether you’re a parent, educator, or simply love great storytelling, this episode offers valuable insights into the art of picture book creation, the importance of friendship and solitude, and how the best children’s books speak to the child within us all. Agee’s gentle wisdom and decades of experience make this a must-listen for anyone interested in children’s literature and the creative process behind beloved books.
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Growing Readers Podcast: Interview with Jon Agee
Bianca Schulze: Hi Jon Agee, welcome to the Growing Readers podcast. I’m so excited to have you today.
Jon Agee: Hi Bianca. Thanks for inviting me.
Bianca Schulze: Oh my gosh, such a pleasure. I’ve been reading your books for quite some time now. Before we go into your latest book, which I absolutely love—it’s like one of my brand new absolute favorites—I thought it would be fun to warm up with some rapid-fire questions. And just so you know, the first thing that comes to mind is a great answer. And if you want to say pass, you can say pass. Ready to go?
Jon Agee: I’m sure, let’s do it.
Bianca Schulze: All right, what’s your go-to activity when you get some alone time?
Jon Agee: Well, that go-to activity I was going to do today—it’s kind of misty out. But I play tennis with a really sweet Chinese man who is 80 years old now. He doesn’t speak English, and we communicate via Google Translate on our text messages. Yeah, we’ve been playing for almost 10 years.
Bianca Schulze: I love that. I love that. That’s awesome. All right, well, when you were a kid, did you prefer playing with friends or having solo adventures?
Jon Agee: Friends, yeah, friends. We grew up on a little dead-end street, and so there were lots of children on that street of the same age. So yeah, there was lots of building forts and playing baseball in the middle of the street, and in the wintertime, building tunnels in the snow.
Bianca Schulze: Awesome. Well, who would you choose if you had to be always together with one fictional character?
Jon Agee: One fictional character. Oh, goodness. God, I don’t know why I went—I just saw Winnie the Pooh. I don’t know. Who am I? Yeah, some wonderful character from a children’s book. That’s Eeyore. One of the characters from Pooh. Winnie the Pooh.
Bianca Schulze: I love it. I love it. And you know what the best thing about rapid-fire questions is? You can reserve the right to have a different answer another time. Well, do you prefer to brainstorm your story ideas with other people or completely solo?
Jon Agee: Solo, yeah, yeah, yeah. And very, very precious moments about—just very guarded about ideas, almost like a living little creature that could dissolve. So I don’t want to share it with anybody until it’s, you know, more than just a little embryo. And then I’m really willing to ask my wife, Audrey, if she’d like to hear it. But I often tell her, “Be kind.” Yes, she’s brutally honest.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Is she pretty honest with you? Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Well, it’s actually funny because I feel like I’m going to go back to the rapid-fire questions, but I feel like this is a fun tangent. Often, you know, when there’s an up-and-coming author, somebody that’s working on a book, they say you need other people besides your family members to read your book because family members will be, you know, maybe overly generous with their kindness. But I have had the complete opposite experience. My family is brutally honest, and I always start with them.
Jon Agee: Yeah, with Audrey, I mean, sometimes—I would say 50% of the time—I say, “Okay, enough, you have to leave. You said your piece.” I’ll kind of slouch back to my room and pick up the pieces.
Bianca Schulze: I love it. Funny. All right, well, let’s go back to the rapid fire. So are you a morning-time creator or a night owl illustrator?
Jon Agee: Well, mornings are really fertile, you know. The early mornings are precious times to doodle and sketch out thoughts for stories that I’m working on. But I used to be a night owl. But then, you know, I think as I got older, it was unsustainable to stay up till three or four in the morning. Those were interesting days back when I was in my twenties and thirties. Yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Well, what’s your favorite spot to be alone and work on your illustrations?
Jon Agee: A very comfortable couch or chair. Very comfortable, you know, just in quiet. Maybe the dog is next to me or something, but just quiet. And the couch, I guess the couch is a good spot too. Yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah. And then I think I know the answer to this one, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Digital tools or traditional art supplies, or both?
Jon Agee: Traditional, yeah. I draw everything and paint everything on paper, but then I scan it into the computer. I’ve been doing that for the last five, six years or something, so I came to it a little late, but yeah.
Bianca Schulze: What’s one thing you absolutely must have with you when you’re creating?
Jon Agee: What am I creating? It’s not a talisman or—there’s no—I don’t rub a little rabbit’s foot or anything. I don’t know. I love to—we’re going to have to pass on that one, because I don’t know if I have a favorite thing. I like to look up at my bookshelf and bring books down. I never cease to get inspired by other people’s books.
Bianca Schulze: Okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay, well then on that, which book was the last book to inspire you the most?
Jon Agee: Beatrice Alemagna—she’s a young illustrator. I think she’s in Paris, although I think she’s Italian—but her book called Pepper and Me. It’s about a little girl who falls and gets a scab on her knee, and she calls the scab Pepper and she wishes it would just go away because it’s ugly, you know. And eventually it does go away, but she misses it and it falls off, you know? And it’s such a sweet story. And her illustrations are just gorgeous. She’s unique. But my favorite book of hers was from a couple of years ago, called Things That Go Away. It’s just a profound, simple book for children, yeah. And grown-ups too.
Bianca Schulze: I can’t even imagine the idea of writing about a scab. And I have not read this book, and now I 100%—when you say it’s about a scab, I’m like, I have to read this. How does this turn out to be one of the most recent inspiring picture books? You know, I can’t wait.
Jon Agee: Yeah. And it’s translated, I suppose, from Italian or French or something. And it reads really simply and beautifully. There’s some lessons in there that kind of creep up on you about parts of ourselves—physical parts that we don’t want. But then we realize there’s this connection. It’s lovely.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, well, one last rapid-fire question. What’s the longest time it’s taken you to complete a single illustration?
Jon Agee: I can think of a book that I did years ago called Terrific about a grumpy guy who gets marooned on a little island with a parrot. And there was a picture I did that I must have done so many versions of, and I saved them and would give the old ones away. Twenty, thirty, forty times I redid it. That’s not including all the pencil sketches before that, you know? But I remember that one because in the end, when I got the final picture that’s in the book, it’s one of those experiences where my publisher used to say, “Well, why didn’t you think of that in the first place?” He always used to say that.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always think sometimes we keep trying to come in the front door to solve a problem, but sometimes you have to climb down the chimney or through the window, right? And it takes a while to figure it out.
Jon Agee: Right, right. Or what I often think is space—putting a picture away for a while and coming back. And sometimes that distance you get from having worked on something again and again, day after day, you know, putting it aside can be kind of revelatory when you come back maybe a week or two later and say, “What was I thinking? You know, here’s how to do it.” Yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah. Well, I have a question that I ask everybody when they’re a first-time guest, and it’s this: to be a writer, they say you need to be a reader first. So was there a pivotal moment in your life in which you first considered yourself a reader?
Jon Agee: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I probably—I don’t know when we’re reading—when we’re actually reading this—Edward Lear’s limericks, The Nonsense Book. You know, those were six-line poems and they were funny poems about grown-ups doing silly things to themselves. I remember reading those. That must have been an early reading experience where my mother—my mother read them to us, but then, you know, like—you know, “There was an old lady from Chertsey who had a remarkable curtsy. She twirled round and round until she sank underground, you know, that remarkable woman from Chertsey.” And they were easy to catch on because of the rhyme, but yeah, that was probably an early reading experience, yeah. Also Margaret Wise Brown, I’m just thinking.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, and do you think it was more of the…
Jon Agee: The Little Golden Books. Margaret Wise Brown, The Friendly Book was one. You know, “I like cars. Red cars, green cars, sport limousine cars. I like cars.” Still have that book. The cover is missing, but yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like maybe you were well drawn to humor, obviously, but also rhythm. Maybe you connected with the rhythm of those.
Jon Agee: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a good point for sure. I think there’s rhythm and poetry in poems. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Years later, in fact, I ended up writing the lyrics and the story for a couple of children’s musicals, which I absolutely loved that experience. I loved writing the lyrics and writing the story and seeing the kids perform this musical. A lot of rhythm in that, but it wasn’t a career that was sustainable.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what was it that motivated you to create books for children initially? And on the other end of the spectrum, what’s guiding you now? And has anything changed for you since you first entered the industry? So what motivated you to start with? What’s guiding you now? And what’s changed in between?
Jon Agee: Okay. Well, okay, that’s good. Three parts. First part, I thought it was sort of an accident that I just got into the business kind of accidentally, which I kind of did. I was in New York and I just graduated from art school, and I was looking for something to make a living at back in the late seventies, early eighties. And I thought, “Okay, I’ll just do these little drawings and see if I can get them published.” You know, because New York had so many publishers back then that hadn’t consolidated into Penguin and Random House. You know? So you could just walk into these dusty offices and meet an actual editor. You know, there wasn’t much money in it, but rent was cheap too, so…
But when I look back at my childhood, I think I was right. My sister—we’re twins, and she’s an artist. She does ceramic art. She shows her work in a gallery. And when she was doing pictures, we were both doing pictures as kids, but my pictures were often part of stories. Some of my earliest pictures are—John, I could write my name “John,” and I could write the word “book.” “John Book.” And I loved the idea of turning the pages. My mom would write in the—I would tell her the story and she would write in the words. It was something I didn’t really kind of understand until several years ago when I thought, “God, I’ve been writing books since I was a little kid.” It just was kind of destiny, I guess. I don’t know about destiny, but it was meant to be, I guess. So that’s probably how I migrated or gravitated towards publishing. I didn’t know it at the time—it was pulling me in, you know. Now the second part of that question.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah. What’s guiding you now?
Jon Agee: Right, right. What’s guiding me now? Hmm. Well, probably the similar things that have always gotten me, which is the art of telling a good story—that challenge of drawing a reader in and keeping them amused and entertained, and of course myself too, and into a kind of a little bit of an adventure or a journey that has enough heft, enough substance in it that you feel at the end this unique satisfaction like “wow,” and an ending where you are kind of maybe possibly surprised but also you want to read it again.
So, yeah, I think that continues to be a challenge because I fill notebooks filled with—they’re filled with story ideas that none of them ever see the light of day. And they’re great ideas for a premise for a story, or they have, you know, they might have a great little passage that could be a story, but they never coalesce into the final—into the 32-page thing that is this picture book thing, which is also its own unique kind of story, you know. Having done them yourself, it’s how to kind of weave together text and pictures to where the pictures are dynamic and there’s things that pictures are informing you that the text steps back and the pictures step forward. All that stuff is the fine-tuning of work and how illustrations are—like that one I was just telling you about that I did so many times over. How to extract the most out of a picture to make it, you know, to be faithful to the story, to the drama, and the… boy, this is a long-winded answer.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, but you know what? That’s because I think it actually is long-winded to create a picture book, right? Right? It doesn’t just—I mean, sometimes the manuscript might come fully formed in your mind, right? But then by the time that you are creating those nuanced moments between where you create the art—I only write words, I don’t create the art—but to then combine the art and to finesse it so perfectly like you do, you know, that is long-winded. So I love a long-winded answer. And I feel like so many people come on and they’re like, “Wait, that was a really long answer.” And I’m like, “It didn’t feel long to me. I was lost in it.” I want to absorb all of this creativeness and beautiful, rich storytelling that you’re able to do. So I like that answer. But I want you to add to it because I want to know the in-between part.
Jon Agee: Very true, very true. Yeah, that’s a great observation because when I was doing picture books in the nineties, most of my picture books were not about children. I mean, they were for children, but the protagonists of all my books were mostly middle-aged men. There was that book about Eugene in Terrific, who’s a grumpy guy who gets stranded on an island. There’s a book about a painter named Felix Clouseau who paints a duck which quacks. There’s a book about an antique dealer named Otis… Yeah, there were a lot of books about—in fact, Emily Jenkins wrote a review of one of my books in the New York Times back then, and her quote—I’ll never forget it—was, “Jon Agee has made a career out of chronicling the masculine midlife crisis for preschool readers.”
Bianca Schulze: That is perfection. I can see why you wouldn’t forget that line.
Jon Agee: Yeah. To your point, the industry changed. Harry Potter had something to do with that. I think when I was writing those books about grown-ups, nine-year-old fourth graders were reading picture books when I would go to visit schools, and part of my joy was the fourth graders because they all had good senses of humor. They understood irony, etc. And then Harry Potter came along, and I think those fourth graders gravitated towards novels or early readers. And I must have just instinctively known, “Hmm, I think I need to write about children.” You know, my books… So that was how I kind of adapted to the times, and I think my publishers were relieved. My first book with a child protagonist, along with the rhinoceros, was 2011 or something. I think 2009. Anyway, they were just—”Thank God Jon has finally decided to do a book about a kid.” And that’s kind of been—I haven’t really done books about grown-ups since, yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Well, so I think we need to dig into the new book now. George and Lenny Are Always Together. I mean, sometimes when I love a book so much, I don’t even know what to say about it. This one hits the spot. So what inspired you to create the characters of George and Lenny? And was there a specific friendship or relationship that influenced their dynamic for you? Where did they come from in your mind and your heart?
Jon Agee: I really should know—I’m having a hard time thinking of where this all… I mean, I’ve been playing around with the idea of animals, two animals. And I know there have been so many books for children with bears and rabbits. So this is territory that’s been traveled many times. But I just kept going back. There must be a reason why there’s so many books about bears, because bears—they stand on two feet. You know, they’re kind of adorable, but they can be all kinds of bears. There’s a lot of personality—different personalities you can extract from a bear.
And a lot of my ideas for stories come from drawing people talking to each other, you know, mostly people, children talking to grown-ups, children talking to animals. And something out of this dialogue often turns into a story. In this case, it was a bear talking to a rabbit. And it was sort of like comic books, just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. And I think it was that first line where the bear is very happy. He’s so friendly. He’s saying, you know, “Notice we’re always together.” And I thought, you know, sometimes my mind just goes literal, you know, sort of almost like stand-up comedy. It’s like, you take the line literally and you play it out and you say, “Well, what if they were always together? That would be kind of strange that they’re never alone. And what if one of them…” A lot of “what ifs,” you know. “What if one of them decided, ‘Hey, I’d like to see what it’s like to be alone?'” And then that kind of helped establish the personalities of each character. The rabbit became—suddenly evolved into a more cerebral character, and the bear was more of a just childlike, loving, sweet person. But the rabbit was more analytical, like, you know… And so that’s where it started.
It’s funny because I think there’s parts of both characters in me, you know, so I think there’s elements to both characters that came naturally to me because I can empathize—I can identify with both George and Lenny, that very naive, childlike bear and that kind of analytical, intelligent, questioning rabbit.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, I honestly think we’re all part George and part Lenny. So I love that you said that because that was what I have been thinking about. And, you know, I think what I like about it is when we get to the end of a really well-written picture book, there’s almost always solid closure, but there’s some sort of specialness where the reader gets to also add their own interpretation into what that story was for them. And so, you know, one might get to the end of this story and think that it’s about finding joy in companionship. And someone else might get to the end and feel like it’s a book about joy in solitude. But at the same time, others might take away that it’s about all of the above, which is what it was for me. You know, I love that it could be any of those three responses, and they would all be correct. So was that something that you consciously set out to achieve, or did that just emerge as you created the story?
Jon Agee: I think most—when I’m working on books, I never really have a sense of what the message is. Sometimes I don’t have—I have no idea what they’re about. And then as they kind of wind down and we’re finishing up the final touches, maybe my publisher will comment or somebody will tell me, “Ah, so this book is about X, Y, and Z.” And it’ll strike a chord and I’ll say, “Oh, you’re right, you’re right, that is true.” But for the most part, I’m just trying to make that story click and fall in love with the characters, of course. I mean, even if they’re a bear or a rabbit or a grumpy old guy on a marooned island, I need to be engaged with the characters. But there’s also that simple desire to make that story that grabbed me from the beginning—that premise, that little sketch that I did on a piece of paper in my notebook—have it, you know, take its little journey and have it be just almost like a jewel, you know, where you come to the end and there’s no doubt that’s the way—that’s the perfect ending. That’s the rhythm, the timing, all that. And that’s where my publisher, Laurie Hornick, and my art director, Lily Malcolm—they’re right there to kind of make, to kind of hone that idea into a book. I don’t know if that was a pretty long answer too.
Bianca Schulze: You know I like the long answers, so we’re good. Well, I think for me there’s such a lovely humor in how George, who’s a big bear, ends up following Lenny’s lead—Lenny’s so much smaller because Lenny’s a rabbit. And I think it’s that—and I just want to throw out a big word—that juxtaposition. I think that’s why bears and rabbits work so well together because I mean the physicality of them—you know, a rabbit can sort of stand up on its hind legs but maybe not quite so much as a bear, but there’s some physicalities that kind of match. They’re fuzzy and whatnot, but I think it’s the size of them. What does it take for you to infuse such nuanced, subtle humor into the book—or into your books—because I think that’s what creates those lovely “aha” moments is to be able to capture nuance, right? And I’ve talked about this with other creators like Matt de la Peña and Lauren Long who were recently on the show—they don’t want to share a message. They want to capture a feeling. So what does that take? Do you even know? Is it just instinct? Or does it take a lot of thought? What is it?
Jon Agee: Here’s an example with the writing and the illustration. There was a book years ago. It was about an astronaut named Demetri who goes to the moon and he’s been there for two and a half years or something. And he comes back to planet Earth. But while he was gone, on planet Earth, astronauts had gone to much farther places and brought back these amazing artifacts from Pluto and Mars and asteroids and so forth. So when Demetri comes back to the planet, there’s nobody there to greet him. There’s no fanfare. He’s been on the moon. He has his moon rocks with him in his sack of moon rocks. And then a ship passes by because he lands in the Pacific Ocean and brings him to New York City. And he has his space suit on the entire time. And he goes to Times Square and he holds up his sack of rocks and he says, “Hey everybody, it’s me, Demetri. I’m back from the moon.” People just walk right by, you know—it’s New York. Who cares if a guy’s wearing a space suit?
And so he figures something went wrong here. “I’ve been on the—while I was gone on the moon, nobody’s here to greet me.” So he goes to the Museum of Intergalactic Space History or something like that to see what’s been happening while I was on the moon. And sure enough, there’s this exhibit with all this amazing interplanetary relics that have been brought back to planet Earth. And originally, the words described everything, you know—Demetri saw a Venusian splurge, you know, there was a fragment of the ring of Saturn, you know, there was a plutonium asteroid or whatnot. And you see him looking up at all this. He’s a tiny little guy. And my publisher said, “Well, you know, this is a lot of text, Jon. Why don’t you just—in the picture, in the illustration, you can have all those things that you’re describing in the text, but just put little signs next to each one of those things, you know—fragment of the ring of Saturn, Venusian…” So the text was basically one or two sentences long. We went from this long description of everything he saw to just—I think the text in the end said, “The exhibition had changed while he was away. Demetri was impressed.” No description of all the things he was seeing because you saw them there, you know. You didn’t need to have all this exposition.
A long-winded way of saying how to get to simplicity in a picture book and when to—and how to—you know, where you decide to take away words and have pictures do the work. That always seems to me like a really good example.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah it does because even if your words are written in a way that’s showing, it’s still telling. And so by removing some of those words and placing the artwork in front of the reader, they get to be the intelligent one to solve that part of the story.
Jon Agee: Yeah. And to your point, you were talking about humor. I think by taking away the words, it allowed the reader, the child, to see the humor because Demetri is very understated, and any kid looking at that page would be saying, you know, “Wow, this guy has not figured it out.” Because on the next page, he’s going to see that the exhibition for the moon is so pathetic. It just—it ramps up the kind of sad humor of Demetri, and I think that’s how we find ways to infuse that humor, yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Yes. Well, with George and Lenny, you know, I feel like you have a really distinctive style of artwork. But do you want to walk us through your creative process for this book? Was it the same as recent books? I imagine it was pretty similar, but just walk us through that creative process.
Jon Agee: Well, George—this was unique in a way because it was very, very simple pictures with no—the only background was a playground with no horizon line. And so the playground is swing set, seesaw, slide, parallel bars, jungle gym, and then finally, a tree house or whatever, a little house. So that was unique, but it was so dialogue-driven and the dialogue was so simple that a child could read it easily, that I felt like it didn’t need too much detail in the rest of it. Just focus on their expressions, their body, their gestures.
The important thing was that they continued to move through the book. There’s not much static. There’s always movement. Even when the rabbit finally ends up in the little tree house, he sits there for one spread and looks around and sees all the things that are inside the tree house. But then the next page, he’s involved with each item—all the little toys, art supplies and so forth. So that was kind of unique, I guess. Yeah. I’m working on a sequel for the book in which there’s much more going on in the spreads. Yeah. But George and Lenny, this one, I loved the fact that it was very minimal, focused on their dialogue.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah. I think too, without having a background, that playground could be wherever the reader lives, you know, like it could be anywhere in the world because the one constant in a playground is typically a slide and the swings and whatnot. I like that idea that, you know, this could be the neighborhood park in your own neighborhood basically, just because there isn’t that backdrop.
Jon Agee: Yeah.
Bianca Schulze: So is there a particular scene or moment in George and Lenny Are Always Together that is a favorite for you or a moment that you love the most?
Jon Agee: I read this—when I first had a Xerox version of this book, I was at a school and I was reading it out loud to the kids, and I almost came to tears at this one page when they say goodbye to each other. Because it’s such a funny spread because George, when they decide to be apart, to be alone, George really—he doubles down. When Lenny says, “You sure you want to be alone?” and Lenny says, “Yes, George, I do,” and then you turn the page and George, slump-shouldered, just walking away saying, “Well, goodbye, Lenny.” But he’s saying goodbye—but it’s so sweet. I got choked up reading it to the kids in the school. I had to take a pause there. Anyway, I do love that goodbye scene.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, and you know, I think this is the kind of book that—I mean, as adults, we have experienced goodbyes and we have experienced loss of friendship in maybe different ways than kids have. And so I think that’s why this book hit me. I mean, I felt a bit emotional as I was reading it as well. I’m like—this is, you know, I think for a kid, it’s fun and it’s enjoyable. But for the adult readers, it’s actually really poignant. It really is.
Jon Agee: Well, it does it for me too. That page—well, I mean, I think there’s a sweetness to this book that is maybe more unique than other books I’ve done. I mean, the connection between these two, it’s very gentle, you know. It’s funny, but it’s very soft.
Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s perfect. So I feel, based on what I’m gleaning from you as the kind of creator that you are, that maybe this isn’t a question that you love to answer, but it’s the kind of question I have to always ask. What do you hope children and perhaps adults take away from George and Lenny’s adventure, this first one? What do you hope—if they were to take away one thing, what would it be?
Jon Agee: I don’t know. It’s something—I mean, I’ll tell you, the only experience I have is—less thinking about that right now, but when I’m reading to kids at schools, and I don’t usually tell—I usually read books when I’m at school, so I’m kind of entertaining, I’m kind of performing the books. So maybe that’s not fair. But when I’m reading to a kid and I notice that they’re really riveted to the story, I have no idea what’s going through their minds, but when they want to read it again, that’s sweet when they want me to read it again.
I remember there was—I did a book called The Wall in the Middle of the Book and kids were asked what they had learned from that book, and it’s kind of—something you said earlier, which is all the different things you can glean from the same story. They sent me this class—ten different things that they’d all felt that they could learn from that book. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” “It’s good to think before you make a judgment.” It was lots of different things that they learned from that book.
I guess they learn from that book—I don’t really ever think too much about what kids are learning. I guess my motivation is to engage with them, to make them think, to make them laugh. I do want them to be amused. I really do—that’s important to me. But also to expand their imagination too. I think there’s some part of my books that is—that I figure they’re like, “Whoa, how did he do it? I didn’t expect that story to go this way.” Or I set up a premise which is kind of implausible and then it all makes sense. There’s a logic to it that a child can see that, yeah, that’s true.
So a rhino—I mean, there’s a book I have where a rhinoceros—a kid buys a rhinoceros, gets a rhinoceros from a pet store, takes it home and throws a ball and a stick and a frisbee and the rhinoceros just stands there. And then he calls a rhinoceros expert and she explains that a rhinoceros can only do two things. It can either pop a balloon with their horn or poke a hole in a kite. And so he’s kind of—he thinks, “I don’t know about this.” And then it turns out the rhinoceros doesn’t even do that. But in the end of the book, the rhinoceros not only can pop a balloon and poke a hole in a kite, he foils a robbery by popping a balloon that the robber’s getting away in—a hot air balloon. And he pops the balloon and then the other robber’s getting away in a hang glider kite and he pokes a hole in that.
So in the end of the book, as I say to the kids, the police run up to the little kid and say, “Is this your rhinoceros?” And the kid says, “Yes.” And they say, “Well, you’ve got a very special one. He can pop balloons and poke holes in kites.” And the kid says, “Yeah. And you might’ve also noticed that he can fly too,” you know? So I mean, there’s elements to that which, you know, the kids just go with it and their imagination is like, “Yes, that rhinoceros can fly.” There’s always going to be one kid who says—and they’ve asked me this—”Excuse me, how does that rhinoceros fly?” I said, “Well, he moves his legs really, really fast.” So yeah.
Bianca Schulze: Oh man, I love it. Well, Jon, it has been such a delight talking with you today about George and Lenny Are Always Together. And you know, I cannot tell you enough how happy this book has made me. Because of the way that you’ve so cleverly captured that delicate balance that I think we all need in our lives—the comfort of deep friendship alongside the growth that comes from independence. So between your artwork and gentle humor, you’ve created characters children, I believe, will instantly connect with while also exploring universal themes that I think resonate at any age. And I know so many of us, whether we’re parents, educators, or children, we’re going to recognize ourselves, like we said before, in both George and Lenny’s journey. Because you see yourself in both, and I know I saw myself in both.
So I just want to thank you for crafting a story that reminds us that true friendship gives us both roots and wings, even if we’re a rhinoceros—the security to explore on our own and the joy of coming back together again. And just a huge, huge, huge, huge thank you for being here today.
Jon Agee: You’re very welcome. Thank you.
Show Notes
George and Lenny Are Always Together
Written and Illustrated by Jon Agee
Ages 4+ | 40 Pages
Publisher: Rocky Pond Books (2025) | ISBN-13: 978-0593857731
Publisher’s Book Summary: This rabbit and bear are inseparable best friends—until now, that is! An irresistible, funny read for fans of Frog & Toad and Elephant & Piggie.
George and Lenny are always together. And it’s terrific. They are never alone! So what happens when one of them decides it’s time to try some alone time? Is there a way for them to be alone together?
Award-winning picture book creator Jon Agee is at his very best in this endearing, silly story of friendship—of asserting yourself, taking a risk, and still being there for your best buddy.
Buy the Book
Other Books Mentioned:
- Pepper and Me by Beatrice Alemangna: Amazon or Bookshop.org
- Things That Go Away by Beatrice Alemangna: Amazon
- Terrific by Jon Agee: Amazon
- The Wall in the Middle of the Book by Jon Agee: Amazon or Bookshop.org
- The Nonsense Book by Edward Lear
- The Friendly Book by Margaret Wise Brown
About Jon Agee: Jon Agee is an award-winning author and illustrator with over 40 years in children’s publishing. Known for his distinctive humor and storytelling style, Agee has created numerous beloved picture books. His career evolved from writing about adult protagonists in the 1990s to focusing on child characters, adapting to industry changes while maintaining his signature blend of gentle humor and meaningful themes. He has also written lyrics and stories for children’s musicals.
Connect and Follow:
- Learn more about Jon Agee at his website: https://www.jonagee.com/
Credits:
- Host: Bianca Schulze
- Guest: Jon Agee
- Producer: Bianca Schulze
The Growing Readers Podcast celebrates children’s literature and its power to inspire a lifelong love of reading.
