A man once said to his daughter while driving to a long-promised Island outing, “We can’t go to Felix Neck, it’s raining.” To which the girl replied, “Well, it’s not raining on my side of the car.” To which the father replied, “Of course it is.”

Years later that girl still maintains that it was not raining on her side of the car.

She recently wrote a book about it.

My Side of the Car, a new children’s book from Vineyard author Kate Feiffer, hit the shelves in April. This marks her third collaboration with her father, Jules Feiffer, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator. There is something special about the father-daughter collaboration.

“It’s been a gift,” said the Oak Bluffs author, “it’s been really wonderful on two fronts. One, it is a way to expand our relationship and we’re both passionate about children’s literature. It’s been a lot of fun.

“Also, he’s pretty good so . . . ,” Ms. Feiffer said, trailing off and letting her father’s reputation speak for itself.

Jules Feiffer’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, and many other places. He has written Obie Award-winning plays, feature films, and he has won an Oscar for the animation of his cartoon satire, Munro.

“It’s been great fun doing these books with [my father], seeing what he comes up with,” said Ms. Feiffer. “I sort of mentally illustrate as I’m writing, and my internal style’s heavily influenced by his style and what I know as his line. So it’s always interesting to see what he comes up with, which is obviously different than the way I’ve [mentally] illustrated it.”

The way the pair works is she writes the words and then he chooses what sections of text to illustrate. Although this book is based on a true story, in the book “the zoo” takes the place of Felix Neck.

Ms. Feiffer has been a Vineyard regular since she was two, when she and her father started spending summers here. It was during one of those summers that the fateful occurrence with the rain/no rain occurred.

“We were on our way and he says, ‘We can’t go, it’s raining.’ And I looked out my window and didn’t see any rain,” she said, with cheerful and absolute certainty. They have never agreed on the actual state of affairs.

“This happened probably when I was seven or eight, and for the next four decades, whenever we can’t come to terms on something and it ends in a stalemate, I say ‘Well, it’s not raining on my side of the car,’” she laughed.

The disbelief in what rationally appears to be true is a pervasive quality in children’s literature. And as an accomplished author for children — My Side of the Car is her eighth book — Ms. Feiffer thoroughly understands the rationale of a child’s mind.

“There are two levels: If the rain is coming from one direction, it literally may not be raining on your side of the car. And then there is the belief and your need to believe that it can’t possibly be raining on your side of the car,” she said.

Like her conviction about the rain, Ms. Feiffer has never relinquished her ability to imagine the world as a child does. This colors all of her stories including the other two on which she and her father have collaborated: Henry, the Dog with No Tail (with Kate’s own dog serving as the model) and Which Puppy? (about the Obamas’ search for the perfect puppy their father promised in a speech the night he was elected President).

Another of her books, My Mom Is Trying to Ruin My Life, was recently adapted into a stage play by MJ Bruder Munafo, artistic director of the Vineyard Playhouse. It had a two-week run at the Playhouse last summer and there is the prospect of it becoming a stage musical, although the project is still in early stages.

Her own early stages were spent in Manhattan, where young Kate was a big reader. “At one point,” she said of Charlotte’s Web, “it felt like I had read it so many times I could recite the book.” Higglety Pigglety Pop! by Maurice Sendak was another childhood favorite, but generally Ms. Feiffer dislikes naming favorite books.

“I’ve never been able to do favorites, because I can only really think about the last book that I loved that I read which I happened to have finished yesterday,” she said. (It was A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan.)

Ms. Feiffer moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1998 with her husband, Chris Alley, and their newborn daughter, Maddy. It was then that the television producer and filmmaker began to write professionally.

“My first book was Double Pink, and it was published in 2005, but I wrote it in 2002 if not earlier,” she said. Even when a publisher buys a manuscript, it can take a long time for the right illustrator to be commissioned and their work completed before a book actually results.

“You have someone who is ready to do your book and you think, ‘Okay, six months from now...’

“This book was bought by Candlewick [Press] five years ago and it just came out,” she said of My Side of the Car.

While it is written for four to eight-year-olds (according to the Candlewick Press Web site), Ms. Feiffer also has written a chapter book for older readers, The Problem with the Puddles, and she is currently working on a novel called Signed by Zelda.

“It’s kind of a forensics mystery involving two children, a missing grandmother, a pigeon and some handwriting,” she said, expecting it will be for a fourth, fifth and sixth grade audience.

When asked if she had a writing goal, the self-deprecating Ms. Feiffer laughed, “The great American children’s book, of course!”

She added: “I love doing the children’s books. My goals are to keep going with that, to get better at it, to evolve, whether it be picture books or novels for kids. I really enjoy writing for kids.”

Children can decorate a real red car outside the Bunch of Grapes on Main street in Vineyard Haven at 10 a.m. on Saturday. Kate Feiffer also will read the book.