People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

I don’t necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that’s most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.

Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I’m not sure that’s true, but I did share some experiences with her.

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.

With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.

I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

I read my books aloud before they were published.

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

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.

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

We didn’t have television in those days, and many people didn’t even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.

Children want to do what grownups do.

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.

I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.

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.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

I was a librarian.