Jonathan Cleaned Up And Then He Heard A Sound was made up for a very specific reason.

I was telling stories at a place called The World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto. Only six kids showed up for the storytelling (This was before I was a well known storyteller. The last time I told stories in Toronto 4,000 kids showed up). One of the stories they liked was about a little boy whose house got made into a subway station.

My publishers were there. They heard the story and said “Gee we like that. We want to make that into a book.” So I worked on it and worked on it and worked on it and the ending about city hall was actually made up over the phone.

The city hall in the book is the old city hall in Toronto.