I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.
I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
Children want to do what grownups do.
I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom - there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.
I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
