Although she gets to show her creative side as an actor, Jamie says it was becoming an author that really made her feel like an artist. "My experience is that it was the only true artistic voice I've ever done because it came from me and I had no expectation," she says. "I love the idea that something came from my mind. It was my idea. It lived and grew right in here."

More than 5 million copies of her children's books have been sold, and Jamie isn't planning to stop writing anytime soon. Her next book Big Words for Little People comes out in September 2008. Jamie says her new book will examine language. "Words [like] consequences, respect, responsibility, appropriate, inappropriate—these are words that I want little people to understand so, when they grow up, they can make better choices as the big people."