I hope that when children read my stories that they evoke images for children. I four stories can help children use their own imaginations and lead them to act the stories out or to embark on related research, they will learn more and learn to love reading more.

If the director says you can do better, particularly in a love scene, then it is rather embarrassing.

Be a part of all that is decent and be an ambassador for the kind of world that you want to live in.

When I read to children, I try to become the characters. It's great if you can make a separate voice for each character. Sometimes you can lower your voice with excitement or get more intimate about it: you can lean forward and engage the children as a narrator or as a reader. It's particularly important that you find the voice that you want to use for each character, because then children can imagine that person as you're reading aloud. And of course, the illustrations help enormously.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

I've never minded being disciplined. I'd always rather have a quiet evening in than go to a wild party. Discipline for me has always been the foundation which leaves me free to fly.

Growing up in England, of course you do absorb certain ways the royals wave their hands and carry themselves. Like most girls, I fantasized about being some sort of a princess.