The Rocky Mountains realize - nay, exceed - the dream of my childhood. It is magnificent, and the air is life-giving.

I ended up living in fear for most of my childhood.

I started training judo when I was 5 years old. I didn't know much. My mom just took me and my brother to do some judo because we were very energetic. We did that for a couple of years. I don't know...

When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I...

Ah, my dad's whistle. On holidays when I was a kid, we would all be off in the rock pools along the beach. When it came time to go, we'd hear the whistle and we'd all come running. Like dogs!

I knew that I had it tough compared to children around me. But I felt like I needed it. I think I had the wisdom as a child to know that it would help me later on.

Every kid has a toy that they believe is their best friend, that they believe communicates with them, and they imagine it being alive, their toy horse or car or whatever it is. Stop - motion is the...

My father had a big brick cell phone, before anyone had a cell phone, because he was really just into that kind of thing - communication devices. I grew up between my father's laboratory and my...

I like working on stories where I can explore the darker corners of childhood without illustrations but with humor.

In my dreams, I could be a Princess, and that's what I was. Like most little girls, I believed nothing less than a Prince could make my dreams come true.

There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.

Don't look like that, Draco, you look like you did right before you pounced on the cat when you were two.

He was, out of all sight {as I remember him}, the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.

The older I get the more I enjoy my childhood…! ~James A. Murphy

She might be the best-dressed little girl in her elementary school class, but she was still a Greek. Her parents spoke a foreign language, their food was different, and she looked different from the...

My whole life, you have made decisions for me. "Your whole life," Georgiana pointed out, "totals nine years."

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact...

Elsa's joke Where do baby apes sleep? In apricots!

Suddenly I was struck motionless: I was living through the first chapter of a novel in which I was the heroine; she was still almost a child, but we, too, were growing up.

The greatest compliment in the world is your adult children telling you they had a wonderful childhood.

You could get crickets to pop out of a book as a little, little girl, but now you have to relearn it? Well, children can do so many things until they're told they can't.

Children need the lie to be brave enough to sleep in their beds

There's the parent you want and the parent you have.

She would sit with picture books in her little lap before she even knew how to read, studying the writing as though all the mystery and wonder of the world were contained in the strange,...

A happy childhood can fortify one against the ravages of life, and part of that happiness is found in books, which become our constant companions for the rest of our lives.

It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.

It's a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, Momma, do we believe in winter?

The boy heaved a sigh. I would ask to go with you, he said, but I have to finish my lessons. I so look forward to the day when I know everything. Then I won't have to read any more books or do any...

Where's Mom? I can't wait to tell her all about this. She's going to be late. An appointment, I think. Again? Jessica pouted. That makes three nights in a row! I thought mothers were supposed to stay...

If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.