"The idea of A BOY AT WAR began with David Gale, my editor at Simon and Schuster. He saw a notice of an big upcoming movie about Pearl Harbor and saw that there was a need of a book on the subject for young readers. He asked if I'd be interested in doing that book."

—on A BOY AT WAR (YA)

“You know, it’s not a complicated story, it’s not rocket science, but what was at issue was the background about the Marnets' privileged life. I wanted to make that background real, not just tell the reader it was there, but make it felt by the reader.”

— on WHAT I BELIEVE (MG)

“There's a story attached to every person who's ever lived, and while the ways in which people live change all the time, people themselves don't change that much--no matter the time period, they love, hate, hope, want, and dream. That's always fascinated me.”

— on OVER AND OVER YOU (YA)

"Why do these stories call to me? I suppose because they depict borderlands--in this case the place where land and ocean meets--which always fascinated me. They are about longing; a man longing for his seal wife to stay and the wife longing to return to her seal family. I'm also interested in people who feel betwixt and between, like the seal maiden who has children on the land and in the sea."

—on WATER SHAPER (MG)

"I actually did what they tell you never to do—I didn't hold on to it and revise it."

—on THE WAY THE STORM STOPS (PB)

"It was such a great dream that I didn't want to forget it (short-term memory loss is one of the hazards of motherhood), so I sat down at the computer and wrote it down. I wrote ten pages that first day. Those ten pages are now Chapter Thirteen, "Confessions," and the true heart of the novel."

—on TWILIGHT (YA)

"While I did a lot of research for this book, I was fortunate in not having to worry about the primary challenge for a biographer--getting to know the subject. Having worked for John Glenn for 15 years in the U.S. Senate, I had a great vantage point for observing who he is as a person and what he stands for."

—on LIFTOFF: A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN GLENN (NF)

“So between the facts and ‘the truth’ something hard to explain would have to occur. I wanted to impart the story in its fullness without killing it with information and words.”

—on RAISING LA BELLE (MG)

"Why not use Spanish in a Halloween story? What does my using Spanish have to do with anything? What about the story? What did she think about the story? The words, the rhythm, the images, the surprise ending? What about all that? If the text itself was strong, what did it matter that it was bilingual?"

—Marisa Montes on
LOS GATOS BLACK ON HALLOWEEN (PB)

"Developing my characters is one of my favorite things. I want them to have a purpose as well as a back story. My mummy was found buried in Peru near a volcano, where he slept for 500 years. Now he waits at the museum's warehouse, while the new mummy’s exhibit gets ready. In the meantime, he has come to join the parade on Halloween night."

—Yuyi Morales on LOS GATOS BLACK ON HALLOWEEN (PB)

"I researched an incredible amount on baseball, urban playgrounds and dozens of characters. After my first round of sketches, editor Tara Walker felt I had created a book about baseball and had not gotten inside the poem. She was right and I was back to square one."

—on CASEY AT THE BAT (PB)

“I wrote WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS during the darkest months of my life, just after the death of my husband of thirty years. Perhaps that is why it is by far the darkest of my books.”

— on WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS (YA)

author update: Anna Myers

"It turned out to be rather like writing a play, I guess, but different even than that, because my characters weren't on the stage interacting together. They were all sitting at their computers, typing. And do you know how potentially boring that is?"

—on ttyl and ttfn (YA)