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I feel very privileged to have reached so many kids because a life without stories, without the power of books, would be a very grey world, it's good to add colour.

I got fed up with the human race, really. I got a very negative feeling about human potentials. And for a while, I thought I might write a book without any human beings in it whatsoever.

I try to make my books reflect humanity as I see it.

As is said about most writers, on the one hand, all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing. On the other hand, the more I read, the more I felt this well-known fissure between me and the world.

When a parent says about a book, 'That's not my child's world,' I remind them of the future. Social fluency will be the new currency of success. Not experiencing diversity challenges our kids' future in the global work force. It handicaps them from making America and the world more livable and just.

Diversity in books is a civil rights frontier.

I wish that the adults who are 'in power' cared more about what their children read. Books are incredibly powerful when we are young - the books I read as a child have stayed with me my entire life - and yet, the people who write about books, for the most part, completely ignore children's literature.

While books expand horizons by exposing us to worlds outside our own, children also need to see themselves, their experiences and their cultures reflected in books they read. Unfortunately, for too many children, this is not the norm.

My values - going back to my childhood - were always based on respect for all people and rejection of bigotry and racism.

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.