Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

I don't ever go on the Internet. I don't even know how it works.

I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.

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

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

My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.