My name is Deborah Hopkinson. I live near Portland, Oregon. I grew up in Massachusetts. And when I speak to students in schools, I always talk about how I started out at a reader. And I think it’s important for young people to get the sense that reading is important, and that’s what makes writers.
When I was little I loved to read. I always tell the story of how I would have those big textbooks — the history or the geography books — and I would have the novel I was reading hidden behind it. So that was what I wanted to do. And I either wanted to be a writer or a doctor, but my math skills weren’t quite there for science, although I love science now. I love to write about it.