Children want to do what the grownups do. Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school. |
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 feel it's important to get children to enjoy reading. |
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library: Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book, Red Fairy Book, and so on, probably down to the Puce or Chartreuse fairy tales. |
If we finished our work, the teacher would say, 'Now don't read ahead.' But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book. |
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books. |
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there. |