I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

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

Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.