On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles.
Katherine PatersonKids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'
Katherine PatersonReading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.
Katherine PatersonMiss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.
Katherine PatersonSometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
Katherine Paterson