We also had donations, where if a child couldn't afford to buy a book, then the child was given one.

The whole idea was to show kids how much fun reading could be. I think we accomplished that.

Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.

I grew up reading thrillers, science fiction, fantasy - you name it - and one day I asked myself if there was a reason why a fear of spiders was so common. Was there something buried deep in our evolutionary history that made being scared of spiders a survival instinct?

I liked Shakespeare in high school, but in university I spent a semester studying in London, and it was sort of in the middle of me falling deeply in love with literature, and I took a Shakespeare course with a professor who couldn't imagine anything more important than Shakespeare.

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.