The Tale of Despereaux came at the request of Luke, my friend's then-eight-year-old son, who asked, "Write for me the story of an unlikely hero with exceptionally large ears."

Reading a story should be a fabulous, wonderful thing. The most important thing that parents can do for kids is to read with them and to let their kids see them reading books for their own pleasure.

Minnesota has been so good to me and so pleased that I love Minnesota.

There are those 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. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

You are the ever-expanding universe to me

The Tale of Despereaux is the story of an unlikely hero, a mouse, who falls in love with a princess and then must save her. It's a triumph of the human spirit, via a mouse.

It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.