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

Don't drop him," said Peter's mother to his father. "Don't you dare drop him." She was laughing. "I will not," said his father. "I could not." For he is Peter Augustus Duchene, and he will always return to me. Again and again, Peter's father threw him up in the air. Again and again, Peter felt himself suspended in nothingness for a moment, just a moment, and then he was pulled back, returned to the sweetness of the earth and the warmth of his father's waiting arms. "See?" said his father to his mother. "Do you see how he always comes back to me?

Everything when I was a kid was illustrated.

I love adventurous travel. I also love pancakes, and making pancakes for other people. You would definitely find me in the airy treetop as opposed to below ground.

We all live in fear of getting blocked no matter what kind of art we're trying to do. It happens all the time, but I prefer to think of it as a bad day.

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.

I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.