I always hesitate to call myself a children's poet, and I always hesitate to call what I write for children poetry. Though a few of the verses that I've written, yes, I think they are truly poems.

I write a lot of children's verse and I think it delights in the language. It pleases people. It's very musical. It's very lyrical and that's certainly a very important aspect of poetry. But I think that a lot of it is verse. I write well-wrought verse.

I don't really sit at the computer from scratch. I prefer to get my ideas in my fingers and I write longhand first.

I don't think anything is as magical as a fairy tale experience by a child.

I have my faithful rhyming dictionary that sits up there on my desk, but I have to tell you, there are very few new rhymes that I didn't think of. I often just go right through the alphabet in my head when I'm looking for a rhyme.

To me, poetry is a recreation, a renewal of language... The subtlety of what words mean and the fact that you write something and all of a sudden you'll realize that "yes, it reaches out. It meant that, too." Then all of a sudden you'll get a rhyme and the rhyme will throw up a whole new way of looking at things. It's this relationship that you never dreamed of.

I love to be read to, I love to read aloud and I love to read to children.