Since the age of four, I've been exploring what I can do with the written word: everything from championing literacy and youth voice to raising awareness about world hunger.

By creating so many illusory images of physical perfection, whether on store aisles or storefronts ads, magazine covers or TV show, we speak more to the profit margins of companies than the self-esteem of today's girls.

Students read for tests and because their parents ask them to, but I think it's very important to tell children that you can read for fun, too, and to understand human spirit. It builds empathy.

To show that you truly care, you listen.

The goal is not to turn kids into your kind of adult, but rather better adults than you have been.

Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, 'Flying Fingers,' debuted; since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.

My family joke that I'm really a very senior person who accidentally happens to be 11.