It never occurred to me, as I was growing up, that someday I would write books for anyone to read. Strange as it may sound, though I had started reading before I went to school, until I was twelve I didn't know that books were written by people. I never thought about where they came from; all I cared about was that they existed and I could read them. I read all kinds of books; poetry, plays, nonfiction ("true" books I called them), but mostly I read stories.

Stories became even more important to me in third grade, when I started to write them to tell my classmates at recess. I was still writing stories when I went to college and afterwards (it was almost as if I needed to write in order to breathe), but it wasn't until after I was married and had three children that I thought about making writing my life's work.

Settling down to work in earnest, I quickly discovered that I wanted most of all to write for young people. But it wasn't until I understood that -- funny or sad -- a story had to begin with something that really mattered to me that I was able to sell anything that I wrote.

And that's the way I've continued to write. What I care about, what I wonder about, what makes me sad, what strikes me funny; it's all there -- in every one of my books.

Sue Alexander is the author of more than 20 books for young people including: