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

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.

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.