Most Interesting People 2017: Lindsay Ward

Why she’s interesting: The children’s book author and cut-paper illustrator lives in a whimsical, colorful world where a baby’s home arrival becomes a heavyweight-style match for attention and polar bears take children on adventures to the Arctic. This February, her Please Bring Balloons is getting transformed into an interactive, multisensory theater experience at New York City Children’s Theater.

California dreamin’: Ward feels like she fits in with the Midwestern crowd, but the San Jose, California, transplant still has a few West Coast quirks. “You tend to put ‘the’ in front of freeway numbers. You say, ‘I’m going to take the whatever.’ Normal people don’t do that.”

Cleveland hustles: Before she made it, it took 2 1/2 years of sending illustrated postcards to publishers while pulling shifts at a children’s bookstore in Boston. A space-themed postcard landed her three jobs, including the book cover of Star Academy, and she finally took off. “I felt like I was doing what I wanted to do for the first time.”

Word search: Ward’s first job with Penguin Random House, When Blue Met Egg, was also her first byline with a major publisher. It took her 20 drafts for the 500-word story of a bluebird becoming best buds with a snowball mistaken for an egg. “You are part of someone’s reading experience, so it feels like a responsibility. I value every word choice.”

Easy bake: The stay-at-home mom of one whips up breads, cakes and pies when she needs a breather. “That’s kind of like my decompression from doing art.”

Macho men: A Conan the Barbarian movie night with her husband, Frank Tupta, led to the idea for her new book coming out in March, Brobarians, in which two babies duke it out over juice bottles, barbarian-style. Adding souped-up muscles, hair and a Pegasus made an epic tale ludicrous — much like the Arnold Schwarzenegger film. “It’s so adult, but you are seeing these ridiculous little kids that are really squishy and soft doing something that is different.”

Spin cycle: Fans of Please Bring Balloons can thank Ward’s parents, who met painting carousels, for the carousel animals. “There’s a part of me that’s Emma from that story where you go to this magical place that’s a blanket of white and a carousel comes to life.” While Ward wasn’t involved with staging the New York show, which takes place Feb. 18-March 5, her family plans to travel to the Big Apple this winter to see it.

Book marks: Ward loves when she reads her books at schools and libraries and gets letters or artwork from kids filling in the endings of her books. “My stories, I leave kind of open because I like to think the adventure is continuing.”