After you’ve written 38 books you begin to discern some of your themes. I don’t think I did that at the beginning. I think I do now, because for one thing, in all of my novels for young people there is an elderly person reaching across a lifetime to touch a young hand. It’s an unsentimental portrait because sentimentality is the enemy of what we do. Even 100 years ago Beatrix Potter knew that childhood was a jungle, not a garden. But an elderly person has toughed it out and paid his or her dues. And indeed my most popular character, the one who has changed my career, is a woman named Grandma Dowdel who defies all of the sentimental views of old people, which we see in bad books for the young. Instead of sitting by the fire with a kitty she is heavily armed with a Winchester shotgun. But she provides a role model for her grandkids, not in what she says but in what she does. And that’s what a book for young people is to me: a role model they cannot find in their peer groups that run their school. I found my role models when I was a kid from real-life people whom I saw, with the exception of Mark Twain who was like the old folks I knew. I even role-modeled myself after my teachers. I wanted to be that articulate, that interested in things that were not going on in the town—that might be going on somewhere else. I can’t be sure that kids are finding adults for role modeling today. And so I hope that’s what I am doing in books. I hope that’s what other people are doing—introducing them to people who have some ideas that their peer group doesn’t. I think that’s the difference between readers and nonreaders: Nonreaders are stuck in their group, whereas readers can resource the world.

SchoolwideBlog: Do you mean that readers are generally comfortable spending time alone?

Yes. I get letters every day from young people, so I realize my readers are lonely. That’s the impression they give me. They’re calling out to a book and not to a contemporary. They’re reaching out. They often want to know things about me that I don’t think should be important. I want them to read the book, not me, but they’re very much looking for better friends than they have . . . or are.

Transcribed from the audio 6/17/09