the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for.

Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes.

I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.

For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was never enough. For Jesse Tuck, it didn't exist.

The only thing I would want to say is that storytelling is ancient; it's something that everybody does. Kids mustn't be in awe of it. Reading should be a joy - fun, fun, fun - not a responsibility, not something you do because society demands it, but something you do because it's a pleasure.

in reading ... stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely.

Right after graduation, I married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator. I spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising our children, Christopher, Tom, and Lucy.