I am a feminist, and I didn't think women would accept a throwback heroine.

I have a children's theater background, so I grew up performing for child audiences it's sort of my specialty. I know the child audience pretty well - or felt like I did because I performed for them so much. I studied a lot about the child audience, about theater. So it was naturally a place that I gravitated to.

Even when I'm writing animation, I think of them as real people. I think of them as completely three-dimensional beings, even if it's a talking teapot. I don't think of them as one-dimensional drawn characters running around. Maybe that's why, to me, there's really no difference in writing the two - animation versus live action.

They're [children] less forgiving. You have to be very conscious of the fact that they're not going to just accept things they're going to question. They're going to move around if you bore them. They'll actually leave. So you really have to be on your toes.