My first generation of young readers now have not only children, but some of them have grandchildren to whom they're introducing their old passion.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you read in front of your kids, it's very likely that they'll become readers, too.
'Harry Potter' made it cool to read children's fiction, and 'Twilight' did the same for a slightly older age group. What I'm seeing is mothers and daughters who love to read the same books.
The early readers are in-between books for the kids who aren't ready for novels yet but are done with my picture books. It's really rewarding to think that they can grow up reading my books at all the different levels.
I can't promise that every child with learning differences will become a novelist, but I do think all children can become lifelong readers.
I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands.
My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life.
Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were young! You listen to some adults saying they were going around reading 'Ulysses' when they were seven or eight! I think children are voracious readers if you give them the right books and if you make those books accessible to them.
Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I'm a children's writer myself.
Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person.
At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.