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

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.

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.

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

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.

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 wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.