I'm an e-mail junkie though I'm trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once.

Librarians save lives by handing the right book at the right time to a kid in need.

"Margaret" was just my truth. It was what I knew to be true about sixth grade.

My parents gave me that gift of "reading is a good thing." I mean my mother was afraid of everything. But she was never afraid that Judy is reading.

I was sick all the time, one exotic illness after another, which lasted throughout my twenties. My worst decade. But from the day the first book was accepted, I never got sick again. Writing changed my life.

I thought ["Summer Sisters" ] would be a children's book - two girls who summer together from very different backgrounds. And then when it just kept going and going and going. They kept getting older.

[When I was a kid] I was a surgeon, amputating legs and arms of my paper dolls. And I had a little board with little tacks that I would tack them down to do this.