It’s hard not to compare my own creative output to Chris’ 60-plus books, his Wikipedia page, his three Caldecott medals, and his New York Times Best Illustrated honors. Envy comes in unpredictable waves, usually when I’m at my hungriest both physically and metaphorically.

“If envy were a fever, all the world would be ill,” according to a Danish proverb—so maybe you’ve felt it yourself? It makes me feel tired and stomach-achy. A quick fix is to disparage the object of your envy but it’s hard when he’s not holding publishing parties, seldom reads reviews, and is not into Googling himself, ever, though he'll look over my shoulder if I point out a hilariously bad picture of him online.

When I'm really down on myself—such as when a series of rejections crescendos into a greater message of disappointment and REGRET—I dump my woes bitterly, tearily, unfairly onto him: Why didn’t I start writing earlier? It’s easy for you to be calm! Look at all you’ve done! How would you feel if you were me now?

And he'll say, sadly, "Maybe I'm not good for you," like his success is a disease he can’t cure.

During these episodes he wants to help so he’ll offer to read an essay or a section of the book I’ve been working on for eight years, but as soon as it’s in his hands the room crackles with my anxious silence. I busy myself in another room but strain my ears to catch his reaction. By the time I get my work back I’m tense and guarded.

He doesn’t know how to give feedback, I decide before I’ve even read his comments, and he doesn’t know how to spell.

“Your feedback is never specific enough,” I grumble, and when he says, “It’s fine, it’s great, just fix this section here, I snap, “If I knew how to fix it, I’d fix it!”

Is it my competitive nature that makes me so crazy? Like when my big brother and I used to play ping pong in the basement and he’d beat me and I’d get furious and demand a rematch; and he’d beat me and I’d get furious and demand a rematch; and he’d beat me and I’d get furious and demand a rematch—until, laughing at the absurdity of his sister, he refused to play.

A friend suggested Chris and I are out of synch career-wise and this insight helped. Chris, too, tussled with envy, especially in the beginning, for example, when a successful older illustrator befriended him in 1990. Chris was illustrating a Grimm’s fairy tale at the time--as an exercise, on the advice of a friend of a friend in the kid lit field--and it was unexceptional. When he and the illustrator got together, Chris interpreted the man’s interest in his work as condescension. And I remember how, at home, Chris would take issue with the artist’s too-cool glasses or mock his fascination with the I Ching.

But I rarely see that side of him anymore. Okay, it will flare up when he hears news of an illustrator who just sold the film rights to a book but it’s largely muted.

What helps him is to do the work. And favorable feedback goes a long way too.

I'll never forget the day I came home from my teaching job in 1991 and Chris showed me the book dummy for Charlie Parker Played Be Bop. The idea grew out of his habit of listening to Phil Schaap's Bird Flight on the radio every morning. He’d given up the Grimm’s fairy tale and did this new book to please only himself. Immediately we both recognized it was fresh and new and the best thing he’d ever done. He sold it, reviews were great and it launched his career.

I’ve had mini-breakthroughs of my own and this has helped me (more on that to come) but managing envy is on-going. What I try to do is build on my successes, one by one, each day another attempt. This blog is an attempt; taking part in a writing workshop in May is an attempt; green table time is an attempt.

Maira Kalman says: “We hope. We despair. We hope. We despair. That is what governs us. We have a bipolar system.”

Chris says you can also invoke this long-standing benediction from Andy Breckman's radio show, Seven Second Delay: May this show succeed and may the shows of my friends fail and yet may I still be perceived as a team player. Amen.