I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.

He was weeping. Although 'weeping' really is to small a word for the activity the kind had undertaken. Tears were cascading from his eyes. A small puddle had formed at his feet. I am not exaggerating. The king, it seemed, was intent on crying himself a river.

My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

[A businessmen in plane after 9\11] asked me, "What are you working on now?" And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I'm trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said "It doesn't matter at all now."

No one cared what she wanted. No one had ever cared. And perhaps, worst of all, no one ever would care.

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.