Don't stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don't forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.

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

In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!

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 write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.

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