I don't go to church much anymore, but Methodist values still wind me up and send me ticking into my daily life.

My mother was a very difficult woman to please. She was the sort of woman who thought that if I were praised I would get above myself.

Books don't harm kids; they arm them.

If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.

I think that my favourite animal is a baby possum, or a joey. The face of a really little joey is so divine - so, so gorgeous.

The fastest way to teach a child to read is to teach them to write.

The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.