I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors.

I was a sidelines child: never class president, never team captain, never the one with the most valentines in my box.

It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.

And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.

Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.

Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.

Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they're still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think that's true of adults as much.