I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

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.

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.

I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.

Children want to do what grownups do.

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

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.