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.

Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

I read my books aloud before they were published.

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

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.

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