I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

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

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

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.

We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.