When I was 7, my proudest possession would have been my bookshelf 'cause I had alphabetized all of the books on my bookshelf.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.
I'm ridiculously proud of my children. More so than any of my books. I suspect I wouldn't have written any of them if I hadn't been lucky enough to have this huge family.
I discovered writing children's books was a way to keep living in my imagination like a child. So I wrote a number of books before I started 'Magic Tree House.' Then, once I got that, I never looked back because I could be somewhere different in every single book.
I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.
I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.
I was passionate about reading from an early age, and I would always be carrying a different book each week.
I love all of my children equally, all of my printed books, and each one bears a special piece of me. But the one I'm most proud of is the one no one will ever see - the very first manuscript I ever wrote, back in 1990. It took me a year to do it.
I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.
One of the great privileges of my life was growing up in a house without books.
I wish I had had my books when I was a kid, I do.