Category Archives: Uncategorized

A couple of weeks ago, I had the great good fortune to meet Neil Gaiman. He came to my university to talk about reading and writing and technology, and he also generously answered a wide range of questions from students … Continue reading →

Place matters. It matters a lot. What would Harry be without Hogwarts? What would Mary be without the secret garden? From Wonderland to Panem, places in books for young people matter to the characters who must find their way through … Continue reading →

When I was young, I was obsessed with the film Chariots of Fire. I don’t really know why. I wasn’t a runner, though I briefly flirted with sprinting during the heady days of my love affair with the movie. Perhaps … Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago, on February 15, I visited a middle school in Northern Virginia and met with two groups of 7th and 8th graders who are students in a creative writing elective. First, I just want to say … Continue reading →

I love and admire many things about Madeleine L’Engle’s books, but what might impress me most is the way she creates a constellation of characters. She invents a whole world inhabited by an array of people, and her novels rise … Continue reading →

I am visiting my mother, and I have culled from her bookshelves a little stack of books that belong to me, childhood favorites that kept their places on the shelves even as my room stopped being mine. Some of these … Continue reading →

For the first time in over a year, I am back in Barcelona in the apartment where I wrote A Sketch in Time and where I imagined that Micah, Jamie and Celia lived. I have visited this apartment many times … Continue reading →

On the first day of class in my Young Adult Fiction course, I read Where the Wild Things Are to my students. I do this because it introduces many of the themes we will encounter throughout the semester and also … Continue reading →

Charles Dickens was born two hundred years ago today on February 7, 1812. Few literary figures have achieved such lasting renown as Dickens, a writer at once widely respected and popular both in his own time and now. Even children … Continue reading →

With some help from my editor father, I have a good draft of my bio for the Catalan edition of my book. If anyone can weigh in, I would be very grateful for feedback. Remember that the audience is Catalan-speaking … Continue reading →