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I go to movies with my children and see fat kids burping, parents portrayed as total morons, and kids being mean and materialistic, and I feel it's really slim pickin's out there. There's a little dribble of a moral tacked on, but the story is not about that.

Many of Judy Blume's books - which I devoured when I was growing up and where I found characters that were believable because they were a lot like me - caused considerable consternation when they were first published, but now they're widely accepted as an essential part of the children's literary canon.

I can tell you that the book 'The Ugly Truth' is about puberty and all the awfulness that comes with that time in a person's life. It was definitely some different subject matter to be writing about, especially knowing some of my audience are second and third graders.

I have spent a great deal of my time defending my work against those who see it as too complicated, too old in approach, too bleak to qualify as children's literature. This has been the bane of my life.

Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person.

With a few notable exceptions, literary fiction in the U.K. is dominated by an upper and upper middle-class clique who usually have a tin ear for the demotic and who portray working-class characters with, at best, a benevolent condescension.

If there is any message in the 'Wimpy Kid' books, it is that reading can be and should be fun. As an adult reader, when I see an obvious moral lesson to be taught, I run in the other direction... Kids can sniff out an adult agenda from an early age. I'm writing for entertainment, not to impress literary judges.

I don't want to ever write a book that seems like it's pandering to younger people or talking down to people who I know are very smart.

Critics called me 'egregious' - I had to look that one up - and 'creepy', but now I don't read them, I weigh them.