I was born full grown in the middle of a hurricane and an earthquake on 10 September 1954, 12.52 P.M. When I found out that I had missed lunch, I gave such a shout that the Earth stopped and spun backwards two days. That's why I celebrate my birthday on 8 September.

Just looking at pictures used to be considered cheating. No longer. The graphic novel is booming. Comics, heavily illustrated texts, books with no words are now accepted as reading.

Expand the definition of 'reading' to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It's the pleasure of reading that counts the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won't read shark books forever.

For the longest time, you couldnt even say boys and girls were different. It was taboo in the educational world.

I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the Time Warp Trio novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just dont take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read Little House on the Prairie when he was in third grade.