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

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!

In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.

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 enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

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