Research is always a high priority in my fiction. Songs, fashion, politics, television, movies, trends - I try to get those details right.

It’s a lovely adaptation that honors Lois Lowry’s vision and authority…the film…illuminates and explores the beauty, danger and pain of our free, creative lives. Plenty to talk about in families and other communities. Go see it.

Keep reading and writing, learn how to revise, and push through rejections. My second book, Monsoon Summer, was rejected over 20 times and finally came out 11 years after my first book! I'm glad I didn't give up. Neither should you.

If you have a chance to see Children Of War, you can watch expert trauma counselors try to help bring healing to young people who have experienced atrocities in conflict.

I learned to read when I was three, so I skipped right over picture books and didn't learn to appreciate art in books until much later.

We adults all stay sixteen or so in some corner of the soul.

Books have always been my home. I ransacked the library regularly from the time we moved to the States. I read on the fire escape. I read at the dinner table. I read late into the night in my room. This unhindered foraging and feasting on books - away from controlling, condemning eyes - empowered me to identify and resist misogyny, xenophobia, shadism, and other forms of injustice.