Beverly Cleary

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.