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I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on 'Aesop's Fables,' 'Brothers Grimm,' 'La Fontaine,' all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine.

In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.

I'm not a big fan of kids' movies that have this knowing snarkiness to them or this post-modern take on storytelling. I think that sails right over the heads of most kids. There's something to be said for a well-told fairy tale. There's a reason that these mythic stories stay with us.

I love telling stories from a kid's point of view because they don't really see all the obstacles in front of them. They're resilient, and sometimes adults can steal that from them.

One of the reasons I began to write was because I wanted stories for my children where the characters spoke as they did and had similar life experiences.

As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was a gullible country boy from Rocky Mount, Virginia, and I believed every folktale they told me, no matter how fantastic.

I was just fascinated with how everyone else in the world lived, and I was interested in telling their story.

The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.

I didn't know children were expected to have literary heroes, but I certainly had one, and I even identified with him at one time: Doctor Dolittle, whom I now half identify with the Charles Darwin of Beagle days.