In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom - there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.