Rob Horton, the main character of The Tiger Rising, was a secondary character in an adult short story I wrote, and he wouldn't go away after I'd finished the short story. I couldn't figure out what he wanted, so I wrote to find out.

Reading might not be the way that the child engages with the world, but it should be something that they all learn how to do, and that they get to have for themselves, as opposed to somebody telling them what to do and how to do it.

Every morning for, I don't know how long, I came over to Alison's [McGhee] house and we sat in her office and wrote the stories "out loud" together. We yelled at each other and made each other laugh. It was a lot of fun.

He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end, where the reader was assured that the knight and the fair maiden lived together happily ever after.

A friend of mine said Winn-Dixie is the way that people want the world to be and Tiger Rising is the way that it is.

What was it like...to have someone who knew you would always return and who welcomed you with open arms?

Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.