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.

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.

Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.

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.