There's very little that's comparable to seeing the spark in a student's face when she gets something that she's been struggling with.

Growing up in Waterloo, the Governor General's Award wasn't something I even thought to wish for.

I think so much of young adult literature sort of gets ghettoized - the title 'young adult' makes people immediately discount it. And just like with books that get written for adults, there is plenty of young adult literature that is bad. But there is also plenty of young adult literature that is brilliant.

If I think of a reader while I am writing, the only reader who really matters for me is my wife. It's most important to me that she likes what I write.

Ezekiel Boone's books, starting with 'The Hatching' series, are meant to be big, sprawling, smart, entertaining books that are fun above all else; the literary novels written under my real name, Alexi Zentner, are certainly a little more quiet.

My children have stolen my dreams in a very literal sense. I've lost months in the minutes and hours that Sabine and Zoey have needed me at night, their thin, butterfly-beating hearts pushed against me in the darkness.