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Most writers adore their editors, and I'm no exception.

I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer!

With a book called 'Keeping Score,' I really did want to write a book about the Korean War, because I felt that it is the least understood war in the American cultural imagination. So I set out with the idea that Americans didn't know much about the Korean War and that I was going to try to fix a tiny bit of that.

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for Seesaw Girl, eight months for Shard, three years for When My Name Was Keoko! The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.

I do think that part of literature's job is to comment on and participate in the social issues of the time.

I used to sit home with my computer and write. After the Newbery, I probably spend more than half my time on the road.