The Magic Of Childhood Is

Then One Day My Sister Abandoned Me At The 1939 World's Fair, And That Incident Is The Essence Of In The Night Kitchen. I Was Standing There With Hundreds Of Other People Waving Back At The Little Midgets Dressed Like Bakers When I Turned Around And My Sister Was Gone! The Next Thing I Know I'm Screaming And Crying And Policemen Are Taking Me To A Big Place With Tons Of Kids Who Had All Been Abandoned Like Me. At Least I Was Old Enough To Give Them A Name And An Address.

If There's Any Advice I Have To Give, I Would Say It's That. If You're Looking For A Way To Get Closer To Your Kids, There Ain't No Better Way Than To Grab 'em And Read. And If You Put Them In Front Of A Computer Or A Tv, You Are Abandoning Them. You Are Abandoning Them Because They Are Sitting On A Couch Or A Floor And They May Be Hugging A Dog, But They Ain't Hugging You.

Grown-ups Desperately Need To Feel Safe, And Then They Project Onto The Kids. But What None Of Us Seem To Realize Is How Smart Kids Are. They Don’t Like What We Write For Them, What We Dish Up For Them, Because It’s Vapid, So They’ll Go For The Hard Words, They’ll Go For The Hard Concepts, They’ll Go For The Stuff Where They Can Learn Something. Not Didactic Things, But Passionate Things.

And It Is Through Fantasy That Children Achieve Catharsis. It Is The Best Means They Have For Taming Wild Things.

I Was Sickly As A Child And Gravitated To Books And Drawing. During My Early Teen Years, I Spent Hundreds Of Hours At My Window, Sketching Neighborhood Children At Play. I Sketched And Listened, And Those Notebooks Became The Fertile Field Of My Work Later On. There Is Not A Book I Have Written Or A Picture I Have Drawn That Does Not, In Some Way, Owe Them Its Existence.