When I was a kid I loved to read, but I didn't write and I didn't create imaginary worlds. So, if one student walks away thinking, "She's obviously just an ordinary person, yet she gets to make her living doing what she wants to do. Maybe that applies to me, too," then I feel like my time has been well spent.

I don't think about being a celebrity.

I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.

Fairy tales dont tell you that dragons are real, but that they can be defeated!

The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.

In The Tale of Despereaux, there is a lot of darkness, a lot of despair. There's also a lot of light, redemption, hope. There's forgiveness, there's friendship, there's love. But the world in all of its potential craziness is also there.

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.