I think of Mercy Watson like a superball; there's a bouncy kind of optimism to her stories. She allows me to play, and she makes me laugh. Hopefully readers feel the same way.

How will the world change if we do not question it?

Anybody who puts a book into someone else's hands inspires me - teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents.

The way we started was, Alison [McGhee] said, 'Tall girl, short girl.' We had no plans beyond that.

And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.

Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.

We were 15 minutes into it and nothing was happening; I thought, well, that's not going to work. Then all of a sudden everything clicked. I don't know how long it took us, but I would just show up at Alison's [McGhee] office. She would type and we'd just kick it back and forth. Writing is so scary for me, such a lonely endeavor, and it became a wonderful thing to show up and have somebody else go through it with me. It was actually a wonderful experience.