Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
Kate DiCamillo
I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.
Whether it is fear of having fish pie or staying in someone's house or not being able to tell the time, all of those things I can remember very clearly. We so often forget how big all these things are for very small children because they are so often trying these things for the first time.
If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.
My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.
In a first draft, I concentrate on moving forward and trying not to panic.
Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?
If you read, the world is your oyster. It truly is. Reading makes everything possible.
Whenever I am with a group of kids, I always ask them, 'How many of you know about the summer reading program at your library and how many of you know it's free?' Spreading that sort of message comes very naturally to me.
My parents are separated. My father left when I was six years old.
Writing my own stories had always been one of my dreams, but I didn't start until I was 29. I was working in a book warehouse and was assigned to the third floor where all the children's books were. For four and a half years, I spent all day, every day around children's books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with them.
I always wanted to be a character when I worked at Disney, but I wasn't short enough for certain characters, and I wasn't tall enough for others.
I was a kid who loved to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I didn't have one favorite book. I had lots of favorite books: 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton, 'Paddington' by Michael Bond, 'A Little Princess' by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'Stuart Little' by EB White, 'A Cricket in Times Square,' all the Beverly Cleary books.
When I was 5 years old, I moved with my mother and brother from Philadelphia to a small town in Florida. People talked more slowly there and said words I had never heard before, like 'ain't' and 'y'all' and 'ma'am.' Everybody knew everybody else. Even if they didn't, they acted like they did.
I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.
I'm not going to make judgments about what people are reading. I just want them to be reading. And I think reading one book leads to another book.
I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I'm having a good time. I can't really write anywhere else.
I was a shy, terrified kid. But I was also a kid who was lucky enough to have friends. I laughed with those friends. I had adventures. We dreamed together. I relied on them.
I decided a long time ago that I didn't have to be talented. I just had to be persistent.
It's such a potent thing, to be a kid. We grow up, and we don't want to remember how everything is so beautiful and terrifying when we're young. The older you get, the more you hope to muffle things.
To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.
I can never tell if anything I do is really good. I'm always just slightly chagrined.
It's a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.
It wasn't until my fifth or sixth book where I realized I'm trying to do the same thing in every story I tell, which is bring everybody together in the same room.
My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.
I hate to cook and love to eat.
There's still, even now, a part of me that can't believe that I got published. That part of me has never gone away.
Everybody reading the same book at the same time pulls people together. It does start a conversation. If you're going to read 'The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,' you're going to talk about heartbreak and loss and all of those things that people don't talk about as a community.
It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.
I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.
'Island of the Blue Dolphins' by Scott O'Dell had a huge impact on me.
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
I actually participated in a Little Miss Orange Blossom Contest when was I was seven or eight years old. I remember standing up on the stage and thinking, 'Oh boy, I should not be here.' Obviously, I didn't win.
Happily, I had lots of childhood heroes.
I don't know what my mother was thinking, but she entered me in a Little Miss contest - Little Miss Orange Blossom, I think it was. And I don't remember anything about that, except I have one flash-bulb memory of standing on the stage and thinking, 'This is not where I should be.'
I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.
I think our job is to trust our readers. I think our job is to see and to let ourselves be seen. I think our job is to love the world.
Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.
Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.
I always write with music. It takes me a while to figure out the right piece of music for what I'm working on. Once I figure it out, that's the only thing I'll play.
I am busier now than I ever imagined I would be, but I feel blessed in that I have found what I am supposed to be doing with my life. It's wonderful to tell stories and have people listen to them.
I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.
I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.
I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.
I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading.
I like to think of myself as a storyteller.
I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.
I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.
Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.
I'm never impressed with myself!
