Good humor pokes fun at the powerful — not the weak.

I hope and pray that despite an unhealed past full of atrocities and deep divisions in the present, God can and will make "the distant near" and a "brother of the stranger" in America's future.

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

There weren't too many books featuring other cultures and countries when I was growing up as an immigrant kid here in the States.

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.

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

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.