When I first moved to Minneapolis, I took a job teaching Chinese at a big public city school. I was new to teaching, and teaching--especially grades K-12-- is wonderful but exhausting. I would power-teach three to four days a week and then ease into the weekend by reading aloud to my students for the last half hour of every class on Friday. I rationalized this activity by choosing only books--novels, memoirs, collections of stories and essays--that had something to do with China.

I had made a bunch of giant pillows out of corduroy and foam, and every Friday these big old teenagers--the hockey players, football players, cheerleaders, loud kids, shy kids, street kids, rich kids, kids who barely spoke English--would arrange themselves on the floor, and I would begin to read. There was never a sound in the room, but all eyes were on me and everyone was listening.

Those were peaceful, happy Fridays. I sat on my desk swinging my legs and reading. There were no windows in the room, and I had brought in lots of lamps so as to avoid the overhead fluorescence, and the lamplight pooled on my students' faces, which in that light and that time were beautiful, every one of them.

Later, I would see those same teenagers walking around in the halls carrying library copies or used paperback copies of the books I was reading to them.

My first baby was born not long after this, and at first he had a tough time being in the world. I sensed while he was still inside me that he wasn't ready to be born yet, and it proved to be true. Lights and sounds bothered him greatly, and so did scratchy tags and wool sweaters. He needed to be carried constantly or he would scream bloody murder, so carry him constantly I did, in a contraption I called The Red Thing.

I cooked with him in the Red Thing, cleaned house with him in the Red Thing, went to the bathroom with him in the Red Thing. The only time he was out of the Red Thing was when he was on my lap and I was reading picture books to him. Which I did for hours. Hours and hours and hours--years and years--of picture books. Me and my boy.

Take a minute and do something right now, will you? Close your eyes and go back in time as far as you can, to the first book you ever remember loving.

Maybe you don't remember the title or author. Maybe what you remember is opening it up and burying your face in it and smelling that picture book smell. Maybe you don't remember the book at all, in any way; maybe what you remember instead is the sensation of being read to, of sitting on the lap of someone who loves you, their arms around you.

Driven, impatient and high-strung person that I am, it is hard to slow myself, hard to find peace. But when I look back on my life, it is the memory of those hours reading--first to my students, and later to my baby boy--that brings me stillness, and solace, and warmth.

Writing for children is my way of welcoming them to this enormous world, anticipating the wonder and pain and delight of the lives that await them. It's about knowing that they will need to be brave and strong to live in this world, and that they will end up going places they never could have imagined they would go. It's about wanting solace for them, and warmth, and peace.

I write for children because I love them.