As a kid books changed how I looked at the world and helped me understand things. Books still deepen me and open my heart.

There are hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.

Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.

I love words; I love the way they sound. Once I've worked on everything else, the last drafts of my books come down to how they sound.

Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

When I was a kid I loved to read, but I didn't write and I didn't create imaginary worlds. So, if one student walks away thinking, "She's obviously just an ordinary person, yet she gets to make her living doing what she wants to do. Maybe that applies to me, too," then I feel like my time has been well spent.