Peter Brown was in Manhattan’s meatpacking district in 2002 when he noticed a few hardy branches dangling from a dingy overpass near Gansevoort Street.
“I thought, That’s strange,” Brown said. “What’s all that nature doing here?”
Brown, a children’s author, did what any inquisitive and slightly quixotic person might do. He followed the overpass, block after block, trying to figure out what was up there and how to get a better view. On the westernmost fringe of Midtown, he located an entry point: A soaring (but not scenic) ramp that passed over a gritty parking lot and ended at an abandoned railway.
There, above the bustling city, Brown took in the desolate stretch of abandoned rail that would, in time, become the High Line — a popular park — and the inspiration behind two of his books, “The Curious Garden” (2009) and “The Wild Robot” (2016).
The latter, Brown’s debut novel, has sold more than 4.6 million copies worldwide and spawned two best-selling sequels — “The Wild Robot Escapes” (2018) and “The Wild Robot Protects” (2023). It was made into one of the top-grossing movies of 2024, with Lupita Nyong’o as the voice of the robot.
“The Wild Robot” takes place on a remote island, as far from the Big Apple as one can imagine. But its roots, Brown said, are firmly planted in the High Line.
That first day he visited, Brown stepped around beer bottles and cigarette butts, weeds and wildflowers. The nonprofit group that had saved the tracks from demolition was already in the process of reimagining the place, but it wasn’t yet open to the public.
“I had a feeling I was trespassing,” Brown said. “I was so curious, I couldn’t quite help myself.”
He was 23 at the time, fresh out of art school and living in Brooklyn. He worked as a graphic designer at a large corporate law firm, a job he soon left to become a background painter at a small animation studio. Over the next several years, he published three picture books — “Flight of the Dodo” (2005), “Chowder” (2006) and “The Fabulous Bouncing Chowder” (2007) — and illustrated two novels.
But even as Brown was busily ensconced in urban life, he missed the rolling farmland near Hopewell, N.J., where he grew up. Enter “The Curious Garden” (2009), Brown’s picture book about a boy who tends a struggling garden in the midst of a drab city. This was his first best seller.
“It’s about nature existing in an unlikely place,” Brown said. “Which got me thinking about the inverse: Something unnatural existing in a natural place.”
One day while he was still working on that project, Brown grabbed his sketchbook and drew a picture of a robot in a tree. It stood on a high branch beneath a sunny sky, its saucer eyes telegraphing confusion.
“This led to me asking a lot of weird questions about robots in the wilderness,” Brown said. “Why would a robot be there in the first place? How would it adapt? What would animals think of it?”
He started reading about robotics, artificial intelligence and animal behavior. He dipped into science textbooks, watched nature documentaries and gravitated back to the High Line, again and again, sneaking peeks from apartment buildings and stores. When the first stretch of the park opened in 2009, Brown became a regular, snapping pictures or drawing from a bench.
“It was just this calling,” he said.
He illustrated posters and pamphlets for the park, even did an event for “The Curious Garden” there. And, in 2013, he embarked on another book inspired by the High Line.
“It felt like a train pulling out of the station, gathering speed,” Brown said. “It was slow for the first few years, then it was full steam ahead. Then it just took over my life.”
In the story, a robot, Roz, washes onto an island after a cargo ship sinks. Everything around her is foreign — jagged rocks, fallen trees, tangled underbrush. The animal kingdom is suspicious of Roz. The bears, beavers and birds are experts at survival; she is not.
Eventually Roz finds her place as the mother of an orphaned gosling named Brightbill. Their relationship is a model of kindness, acceptance and encouragement — a response of sorts to Brown’s fraught relationship with his own mother, who struggled with mental illness.
“She was not a great mother, to be honest,” he said.
Brown’s parents divorced when he was 8; his father, a scientist, “was pretty much out of the picture from that point.” There were times when Brown would come home and find a note from his mother, who had checked herself into a clinic.
“Suddenly I had to call friends and neighbors and see if I could stay with them,” he said. “It was difficult.”
He went on, “I wasn’t thinking about this all the time when I was writing Roz, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she is the most stable, most reliable mom you could imagine.”
Brown’s mother paid for his art classes while working two jobs, and she enlisted creative friends to nurture his talent. With her encouragement, he grew up thinking of himself as an artist.
With “The Wild Robot,” Brown started to take himself seriously as a writer. But he worried he didn’t have the chops to pull off a project that was longer than a few hundred words.
“I kept asking myself, Did I miss something?” Brown said. “Is there some loophole? Is there some detail that I got wrong?”
Finally, he turned the manuscript over to his editor, Alvina Ling, whom he’s worked with since 2002. Together they worked on nine drafts.
“By the time we were done, we were both so close to the book, it was hard to understand what we had,” Ling said.
She sent “The Wild Robot” to Damon Ross at DreamWorks Animation, who’d expressed interest after reading about it in Publishers Weekly. He worried about competing with other robot movies — “WALL-E,” “Big Hero 6,” the “cultlike fanship” of “The Iron Giant.” But, Ross said in an email, he knew “The Wild Robot” was “timely and universal.”
Brown signed a contract with DreamWorks Animation shortly after the book came out.
He also sent a signed copy to his mother. She loved it.
The book was an instant best seller. In April 2017, it was chosen for the Global Read Aloud, which connects around 40,000 teachers — and their students — each year. In her announcement, Pernille Ripp, the founder of the program, praised the book’s emphasis on community, empathy and acceptance.
“It speaks to kids in many ways,” Ripp said. “As for adults, we’ve been Roz. We’ve stood in so many situations, dropped onto islands, hoping to prove to people that we’re more than the destiny that others have carved out for us.”
While the movie was being made, Brown had periodic Zoom calls with Chris Sanders, the director, and Jeff Hermann, the producer. He saw storyboards and provided feedback, but mostly relinquished control to DreamWorks.
The book can spark conversations about science, technology, the environment, relationships, bullying, even immigration. The movie focuses more on kindness as a survival skill.
“I never use those words in the story; it’s a show, don’t tell kind of thing,” Brown said. “I did use those words with the filmmakers and it unlocked the story for them.”
He cried during the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Some of those tears were from the movie,” he said. “A lot of those tears were from what felt like a milestone in my life.”
On a sunny October morning, Brown climbed the ramp to the High Line once again. This time, he navigated joggers, shoppers, strollers, students and busy New Yorkers racing to work in Hudson Yards.
Much has changed since those early pilgrimages to an off-limits corner of the city. The High Line is one of Manhattan’s most popular tourist destinations. Its scruffiness has been polished to a high gloss, its weeds replaced with native grasses and contemporary art.
Brown is 45 now, living in Maine. He’s married and has a son of his own. His mother died in 2018.
“The older I get,” he said, “the more I appreciate what she did.”
Taking in the familiar view — of the city where he got his start and the railway he followed — Brown had the air of a person who stepped into a wardrobe and discovered Narnia.
“I miss the wildness of the original place,” he said. “But look what it’s become.”
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