“I write for young people because I like them and because I think they ...” — Nancy Garden Quote

I write for young people because I like them and because I think they are important. Children's books can be mind-stretchers and imagination-ticklers and builders of good taste in a way that adult books cannot, because young people usually come to books with more open minds. It's exciting to be able to contribute to that in a small way.

When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain for books about my people. I did find some paperbacks with lurid covers in the local bus station, but they ended with the gay character's committing suicide, dying in a car crash, being sent to a mental hospital, or 'turning' heterosexual.

My coming out, like most people's, was and is a gradual process - for no matter how out one is, there are always situations when one's with people who don't know, and one has the choice or, sometimes, the necessity of coming out to them.

I think kids in every minority need to see people like themselves in books; that's an acknowledgment of their existence on this planet and in this society.

Funny enough, I don't really recall being read kids' books as a child. I think my truly favorite thing to do was flipping through the adult coffee table books and imagining what those worlds were.

Many filmmakers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant, with pursuits that are pretty base... But I haven't found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them... Some of them are as bright as any of the adults I've met.

Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality.

PBS was just such an awesome resource for a child's early development. And now I realize Mister Rogers is also an awesome resource for an adult's development because his philosophies are just timeless and are so relevant and are so important and are so simple and just something we can all grasp onto easily.