>> Speaker 1: From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> David L. Paterson: Good afternoon. Many of you have read some of Katherine's work. Some of you have met her and some of you know her very well. I've had the honor of knowing her for 50 years, 120 days, six hours and give her to a couple of minutes. My mom, I'm very proud to introduce her. ^M00:00:34 [ Applause and Cheering ] ^M00:00:38 Many of you know her works of fiction. She's an incredible storyteller, but as her son growing up with her, there were many stories that we enjoyed that were from our history and our lives, which she would be talking about today. So I'm not going to waste any more time with me bragging about my mother. I'm going to introduce her, Katherine Paterson. ^M00:01:04 [ Cheering and Applause ] ^M00:01:14 ^M00:01:20 >> Katherine Paterson: Hi. Thank you for coming to this large room. I walked in a little nervous, but I see that my friends and relatives are here, so that helps. I'm delighted to be here. I was listening to David speaking. I had already told my children that none of them could speak in my funeral because all they do is get up and make fun of me. And now, maybe I'll have to reconsider because, you know, they might say something nice. It's really, really great. I always swore that I would never write a memoir. One, I don't have a good enough memory to write a memoir. And two, I could not believe that those who are nearest and dearest to me would want to be minor characters in the story of my life. So then, I began to realize that some of the stories that I've been told by my parents were not being told to my children and my grandchildren. At that time, my husband is quite ill and I was not-- anyway, ready to write another novel, so I thought this is the time to write down some of those stories. I gave them to my friend and it's a graph to read. And I just said, "Katherine, if you're thinking of publishing these," which of course, any writers always thinking of publishing. And she said, "You've got to connect the stories of your life with the stories you have written. So I went back and rewrote and tried to do that. Now, when people asked me about my memoir, I patiently say that it is a non memoir. It is not a connected narrative the way a real memoir should be. And they said, "Well, what is it?" "It's just stories in my life." "And what is the name of it?" "Stories of My Life." ^M00:03:41 [ Laughter ] ^M00:03:42 So here it is. And I sort of start out by asking three questions that we're not talking to children because my audience is often of children. The three questions which I am most often I ask, when did you first begin to right? How did you become a writer? Two, where do you get your ideas? And three, how does it feel to be famous? Now, you understand I write for children, and my fame such as it is is at a very narrow world. But, I'm going to read to you first of all my answer or most of my answer to the question, how does it feel to be famous. The questioner is young and earnest and has just confided that although she doesn't know what she wants to be, she knows that she wants to be famous. I don't really know how to answer her question. How does it feel to be famous? And then I remember things that happened after Bridge to Terabithia, the Newbery Medal, I would be invited somewhere to speak and there would be a lovely dinner at which I was the honored guest. The people on either side of me at the table would say something gracious and congratulatory. And then they would turn to the person on the other side and never speak to me again for the entire meal. There were a few times when the person in charge made it clear that she'd hire me out for the weekend and she did expect to get her money's worth. I'd come home and whine to my long suffering husband. "I'm a human being." I'd say. "Why can't you just treat me like a human being?" And then I remembered Anita. When I was in Chandler Junior High School in Richmond, Virginia, all of us new kids were put in the same homeroom. It was a wonderful thing because we could make friends with each other. We didn't have to try to cope with the already cemented cliques that populated the rest of the school. I made several friends that year, but there was one new girl that we were all shy around. The reason we were shy around Anita was because she was famous. She was the youngest member of the Carter sisters. Her mother, Maybelle, had been part of the legendary country music group the Carter Family. Her older sister June went on to marry Johnny Cash. At that time, her old sister and her mother and Anita sang regularly on the radio and in concerts all over the South. We didn't make friends with Anita, because we didn't know what to say to someone who was famous. Because she had moved around the country a lot, Anita needed catching up in a couple of subjects. And for some reason, I was asked to tutor her. I'm sure it was not in Math. To my amazement she was so shy that even one on one, she barely spoke above a whisper. Yet that summer, I went to a concern in the-- at a stadium, and on stage, Anita was transformed. The huge crow loved her and she obviously loved performing for them. "If it hard for me at 45 to deal with the little bit of fame that I have, how must it have been for Anita?" I wondered. So I wrote Come Sing Jimmy Jo about James, a shy boy who becomes a star. If you want to know what Katherine Paterson is really like, you should read that book. Like James and perhaps Anita, I'm a shy show-off, a very private person who loves to perform. When my friend Nancy Graff read this section on feeling famous she said, "Oh come on, Katherine, you know you get a kick out of being famous." We both laughed. I mean, I was thrilled to be introduced to the empress of Japan and hear her say, "Katherine Paterson? Who wrote Bridge to Terabithia?" Sometimes I can't believe my own life. I find my self standing on a stage or sitting at a table with writers I have known and admired for many years, really famous people and think, "This is me here with these amazing people." But that doesn't mean I feel famous. Famous is not an emotion like love or hate or jealousy or fear, feelings with which I am well acquainted. You can't feel it, but you can learn over the years to sit back and enjoy the perks. My special friend when I lived in Takoma Park, Maryland, was Gene Novovitch. Gene was an established writer when I first met her. But not long after we became friends my second novel was published, then the next four that all won national prizes. Gene stood by me in my triumphs, just as she would through my troubles, and always with a wonderful sense of humor. ^M00:10:00 Soon after the first Newbery, I was scheduled to give a speech that I knew had to be a good one, since it seemed to me that almost every important children's writer and critic on both sides of the Atlantic was going to be in the audience. We were on vacation at Lake George, so I sent the speech to Gene for her comments and revised accordingly. But I was still anxious. I called her and told her she'd just have to pray for me, as I was afraid I was going to fall apart. Gene, a devout Roman Catholic, promised she'd pray, but told me to calm down. It would be all right. It was all right. And I called her to tell her it had gone all right and thanked her for her prayers. "If I'd known how efficacious Roman Catholic prayers were," I said, "I might have converted long ago." "Well, I did pray," she said, "and he said, "Katherine who?" ^M00:11:15 [ Laughter ] ^M00:11:16 When I moved to Vermont, Gene got in touch with Grace Greene, a friend I had made soon after moving, and I-- and told her that as long as I was in Maryland and even in Virginia, she had been able to keep me humble, but Vermont was just too far away, so she was turning the job over to Grace. I wondered if Grace had taken the job a little too seriously when she told me the following story. A small group of us gather periodically to do pastel painting and on the night of January 5th, 2010, I was missing. Grace had gotten an invitation, so she knew that I was in Washington being presented as the new Ambassador for Young People's Literature, but when the others asked where I was, Grace said, "She's in Washington being made a national embarrassment." When she realized what she had said, she tried to correct herself. "Oh, no, I mean natural embarrassment." Gene would have loved that very Freudian slip. So real friends like mine are more precious than awards. Since that's true, I know I am truly blessed and gratitude, unlike fame, is something you can actually feel. Now, I don't think it's a secret with anyone that I was born in China, if you know anything about me. And twice during my childhood, we had to come to the United States because of World War-- of the World War, first war between and Japan. And then when it was feared that America would soon be in the war, a second evacuation. By the time I was five, I have been through war and evacuation but nothing prepared me for the American public school system. I only remember one classmate from the first grade at Kinder Park School. Her name was Martha and she had a beauty mark on her cheek beside her lip, which we all thought was very exotic. She was the queen of the class, and although I didn't know much about Valentine's Day, I knew hat everyone was expected to give Martha a valentine. When the valentines were passed out, the pile on Martha's desk proved that everyone, including me, had complied. I waited a bit anxiously, but the valentine delivery boy passed by my desk every time without putting anything on it. I don't think I was particularly surprised. I understood somehow that I was invisible in that class. But on the way home, I realized that my older brother and sister were carrying valentines they had received, which they happily showed off to mother as soon as we arrived. I was embarrassed when she asked to see mine. I hated to confess that I didn't have any to show. It seemed like a character flaw. But mother was outraged, "How could any teacher let a little girl come home from first without a single valentine?" It was a question she seemed to pondered more than once over the years. After I was an established writer, she asked me why I didn't write a story about the day I didn't get any valentines. "Why mother," I said. "All my books are about the day I didn't get any valentines." ^M00:15:25 [ Laughter ] ^M00:15:28 And then second evacuation in the United States eventually took us to Winston-Salem North Carolina where I became a student, a very unhappy student at the Calvin H. Wiley Elementary School. There were terrible things about the school for me initially. But the worst of all was Pansy, the seventh grade bully, who along were with her two large friends, terrorized me on the playground. Since there were no girl friends to hang out with during recess, I would stand trembling as close to the school building as I could, watching Pansy and her friends coming toward me from the bottom of the huge playground. "I'm going to report you," she said to me one day. "You're walking on the grass." I looked down at the hard, bare ground under my feet. "There's no grass here," I protested. "Of course not," she said, "because people like you keep walking on it." Now being reported was like being indicted for a felony. I lived in dread for days. I couldn't tell my parents, they had gone to my aunt Katherine's funeral in Lexington. And even after they returned, I couldn't tell them. I was sure the disgrace would have been too much for them to bear. Every recess Pansy would tell me that any moment, I would be called to the principal's office. One day I was so frightened that I broke into tears in music class. Mrs. Obershein, the beautiful music teacher quietly took me out into the hall and gently asked me what was the matter. I blurted out my crime and Pansy's threat. She didn't laugh. She didn't even smile. She simply assured me that I would not be expelled for walking on the imaginary grass, indeed she was quite sure I wouldn't even be reprimanded. I should just go to the girls' room and wash my face and come to class when I was feeling better. I recognized that some of my best writing had its seeds in that awful year, but I can't remember once saying to my nine-year-old self, "Buck up, old girl. Someday you're going to make a mint out of all this misery." There were, however, a few people that I remember with great fondness from that horrible year. One was, of course, Mrs. Obershein, who not only taught me how to do-re-mi, but also showed me that there were adults who could deeply empathize with a child's irrational fears. Another was the librarian of the Calvin H. Wiley School, who made the library a sanctuary and a source of comfort and delight-- sorry, in an otherwise frightening place. And then-- And then there was Eugene Hammet, the other weird kid in the fourth grade. I have told the story of Eugene so many times that I am sure there are people in the audience that could lip sync it, but I can't resist telling it again here. In fact at this point, I usually say, "How many people in this audience have never heard me tell the story of Eugene Hammett." Good. Because I have sworn I will continue to the story as long there's one hand goes up. ^M00:20:06 ^M00:20:11 Though Eugene and I became friends sometime in the course of that year, there was an important difference between me and Eugene. I was weird through no choice of my own. I spoke English, as my friends in Shanghai had, with something of a British accent. I could hardly afford lunch, much less closes, so my classmates would from time to time recognize on my back one of their own donations to charity. On December 7th, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and because it was known that I had come from that part of the world, there were dark hints that I might be one of them. Eugene on the other hand, was weird by choice or mostly by choice. I guess he didn't choose his looks. He was a perfectly round little boy who wore full-moon, steel-rimmed glasses, long before John Lennon made them acceptable, and sported a half-inch blond brush cut. My only ambition in the fourth grade was to become somehow less weird. Eugene's declared ambition was to become a ballet dancer. In North Carolina, in 1941, little boys, even well-built or skinny little boys, did not want to be ballet dancers when they grew up. Now, sometimes outcasts despise each other, but Eugene and I did not. We were friends for the rest of the fourth grade and all of the fifth, sixth and seventh grades. During my public school career, Calvin H. Wiley was the only school I went to for much more than a year. And by the time Eugene and I were in the seventh grade. I had fulfilled my modest ambition. I was no longer regarded as particularly weird. Eugene on the other hand continued to march r should I say dance to a different drummer. We moved the summer after seventh grade. I grew up at last and had a full, rich life in which people loved me and didn't call me names, at least not to my face. But from time to time over he years I would think of Eugene and worry about him. Whatever could have happened to my chubby little friend whose consuming passion was to become a ballet dancer? After many decades and scene changes, the Paterson family was living in Norfolk, Virginia, and our son David had become, at 17, a serious actor. But in order to get the parts he wanted, he realized that he needed to take dancing lessons. There was, however, a problem. Even in 1983, boys in Norfolk, Virginia, did not generally aspire to become ballet dancers. He asked me to find out about lessons he could take without the rest of the soccer team knowing about it. My friend Kathryn Morton's daughter took ballet, so I said to Kathryn, "David needs to take ballet lessons, but he's not eager for all his buddies to know about it. Do you have any recommendations?" "Well," she said. "If he's really serious, Gene Hammett at Tidewater Ballet is the best teacher anywhere around. Of course, you might find him a bit strange, but--" "W-w-w-wait a minute," I said. "Gene who?" "Hammett," she said. "He sends dancers to the Joffrey and New York City Ballet and Alvin Ailey every year. He's especially good with young black dancers. Terribly hard on any kid he thinks has talent, but he'd give his life for them." "Gene who?" I asked again. "Hammett," she said. "You may have seen him around town. He's enormous and wears his great flowing caftans. He does look a bit strange, but he's a wonderful teacher." "You don't happen to know where he came from?" "Well, he came here from New York." "New York? He wasn't a dancer?" "Oh, yes. He was quite good in his time. You wouldn't it by looking at him now, but he was a fine dancer 20, 30 years ago." "You wouldn't happen to know where he grew up?" "Oh, I don't know," she said. "North Carolina somewhere I think." "Next time you see him, would you ask him if he remembers anyone named Katherine Womeldorf from Calvin H. Wiley School?" Some days later the phone rings. "Katherine?" Said an unknown male voice. "This is Gene Hammett." "Eugene! Do you remember me?" "I even remember a joke you told me in the fourth grade. I asked you why if you were born in China you weren't Chinese. And you said, 'If a cat's born in a garage, does it make it an automobile?'" ^M00:26:34 [ Laughter ] ^M00:26:37 See if I started writing then, I could write funny books. ^M00:26:42 [ Laughter ] ^M00:26:43 "And what about you? You danced in New York, and now you're famous teacher of ballet. It's hard to imagine. You were a little round boy the last time I saw you." He laughed. "Well," he said, "now, I'm a big round man." I saw Eugene a number of times after that, and he was indeed a big round man. But I also saw pictures of him leaping like a Baryshnikov from the boards of a New York stage. And even I missed knowing him when he was slim and gorgeous and at the height of his career, I wouldn't give anything for known that he-- it had happened as he had determined it would, back then when we were both weird little nine-year-old at Calvin H. Wiley School. I tried a couple of times to put Eugene into a novel, but I found that you can't put real people into books. Characters in books have to be believable. And real people especially people like Eugene are simply not believable. I did try to put Pansy, the seventh grade bully into Bridge to Terabithia. It was going to be the perfect revenge for all those terrifying recess hours she caused me, but here again, I don't know why Pansy was a bully. I know that people aren't born bullies and that no one is a bully or a snob, who is comfortable with himself or herself. But I had to know why Janice Avery was a bully. And when I knew, I feel sorry for her. Before I finished the book, I rather liked her. It ruined my plan for revenge. I heard somewhere that unless you can find yourself in your villain, he or she will remain in a cardboard character. Good advice for fledging writers, I believe. ^M00:28:56 ^M00:29:05 I asked David's permission because the book that-- if you know anything about me, the book that you know is Bridge to Terabithia and I asked David's permission to read the story. And he gave me that permission. And this is a story you may already know again. But, I'm going to read it and then we'll take some time for questions. If the fourth grade at Wiley School was the most miserable year of my childhood, I think I would have to choose the year 1974 as the most painful year of my adult life. I was working on The Master Puppeteer when I was sent to the hospital to see about a suspicious lump that turned out to be a malignancy. ^M00:30:02 It was obvious that I-- It is obvious today that I survived my bout with cancer. In the year since I have enjoyed remarkably good health, but in 1974, I didn't know what the future would be or if I had one to look forward to. Now children are often afraid of death, and I certainly was as a child. But I was 41 years old now with four young children, and it was not only the dread of dying, but the idea of leaving my children behind that I could not bear to imagine. I knew my lovely husband would be fine. There would be women lining up around the block to snatch him up the moment I was out of the picture. One of them might even turn out to be a better mother than I was. But, surely I thought, no one, however fit to replace me, could ever love those children the way I did. Of course, my death would not leave my children alone. They had a loving father and grandparents and aunts and uncles and a whole congregation of people who would care for them. Lin and John were not only brother and sister, but the closest of friends. Mary had a wonderful teacher with a daughter just Mary's age who looked after her while I was in the hospital and, would, I knew, continue to care for her. And David had Lisa. Lisa had come into our lives the previous autumn. The small school that our children attended was closed and all the students were moved to a much larger elementary school across town. David, our second grader was miserable. In the little school he was both the class artist and the class clown. In his new school, he was simply weird. Every day he came home and declared that he was never, ever, ever going back to that school and you can't make me. And I, his mother, who had been in fifteen different schools by the time I was 18 and had been initially despised at nearly every one, was over-identifying with my seven-year-old, probably exacerbating his misery, but, nevertheless getting him up every morning and grimly piercing-- pushing him out the door, fearing that his unhappiness would never end. Then one afternoon, our bright funny little boy that I thought was gone forever came running into the house. "Me and Lisa Hill are making a diorama of Little House in the Big Woods," he announced cheerily. I had never heard the name before, but from then on I was to hear hardly any other name. "Now I'd like to promise you girls," I say when I'm talking to students, "that I was thrilled that my son's best friend was a girl. But unfortunately, all I could think was, they thought he was weird before, now he's never going to fit in." But then I met Lisa, and my worries evaporated. Anyone would be fortunate to have her for his best friend. She was bright, imaginative and funny. She laughed at his jokes and he at hers. She was the only girl daring enough to invade the second grade boys' ball team. She and David played together after school in the woods below her house and talked to each other in the evenings on the phone. "It's your girlfriend, David," his older brother would say. But David would take the phone unperturbed. Girlfriends are people who chase you down on the playground to grab you and kiss you. Lisa was no more a girlfriend than Margaret Thatcher was a Playboy Bunny. ^M00:34:09 [ Laughter ] ^M00:34:11 Then on an August morning, the phone rang. It was a call from the Hill's next door neighbor. "I thought you ought to know," Mrs. Robinson said, "hat Lisa was killed this morning." While the family was on vacation at Bethany Beach, on a day when the lifeguards sensed no danger from thunder far off in the distance, a joyful little girl, dancing on a rock above the beach, was felled by a bolt of lightning from the sky. How was I to make sense of this tragedy for my child? I couldn't make sense of it for myself. So, eventually, I began to write a story, because I knew that a story has to make sense. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and when you get to the end, even if you cannot articulate intellectually what has happened, you know emotionally, that you have come from chaos to order. In thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzche says, "One must have chaos within to give birth to a dancing star." And somehow, as dark as life itself sometimes seems, at the end of a well-told story, the dancing star will shed light on the chaos. So, I began to write what I could not understand or explain, but when I came to the place in my story when I knew that if I went to work the next day I would write the chapter in which Leslie Burke would die, I did the only thing I could do to keep her alive, I didn't go to work. I caught up on my mail. I rearranged my bookshelves. I think I was even reduced to scrubbing the kitchen floor, anything to keep from writing the fatal chapter. It was just then that I happened to have lunch with a former Richmond classmate. "How's your new book coming?" She asked. Now, no one, as the longsuffering members of my immediate family know all too well, no one is ever supposed to ask me how my work is coming, but Estelle had known me longer than any of them, and she has no respect. So I blurted out an answer, "I'm trying to write a book about a friendship between a boy and a girl in which the girl dies," I said. "But I can't let her die. I guess," I added, thinking I was very wise, "I guess I can't face going through Lisa's death again." Estelle looked me straight in the eye. "I don't think it's Lisa's death you can't face," she said. "I think it's yours." I knew she was right. If it were Lisa's death I couldn't face, it was one thing, but if it was my death I couldn't face, then I would have to finish the book. I went home that afternoon, and with sweat pouring down my arms, wrote the chapter and in a few days finished the draft. It was the most painful writing I had ever done, so painful that I simply could not stand having it around the house, so I did what no real writer would ever do, I mailed the draft to Virginia Buckley before the sweat had evaporated. As soon as I mailed the manuscript, I knew that I had made a terrible mistake. Every day I expected the letter that would tell me politely, maybe even a little sorrowfully, that I had obviously lost whatever talent I had shown up until then, that my career as a writer was over. Instead I got a phone call. It was Virginia, saying that she wanted to talk to me about my new manuscript. I stopped breathing. "I laughed through the first two-thirds," she said, "and cried through the last." I began to breath again. "Now," she continued, "Let'' turn it into a book." And then she did what I believe the great editors do, she asked me about the question that would do just that. "Is this," she asked, " a story about friendship or is it a story about death?" Until that moment, I had thought I was writing a story about death. Hadn't it been a year of death in our lives? But as soon as she asked the question, I knew I was wrong. "Oh," I said, "it's a story about friendship." "Then you need to go back and write it that way." She went on to remind me that in any true friendship both friends change and grow because they know each other. ^M00:40:03 "I see how Jesse has changed because he has known Leslie, but I don't see how knowing Jesse has changed Leslie. How has Jesse made a difference in her life?" That was the problem that had to be solved to turn my pitiful little cry of anguish into a real story. And as I pondered it, up from the dust of the playground at Calvin H. Wiley School arose Pansy and her two gigantic cohorts who had bullied me when I was a fourth grader. I meant to leave much more time for questions and I seemed to be I don't know who's flashing things at to me. I have 10 minutes left, so let's stop and at least have a few minutes-- ^M00:40:53 [ Applause ] ^M00:41:00 Thank you. The questions are often the most fun, so. I just saw in my hotel room a New Yorker cartoon in which the writer says, "That's a very good question. Would you ask it again tomorrow?" >> Speaker 4: I have a question-- >> Katherine Paterson: Is there-- are there-- yeah, somebody is waving back there. >> Speaker 4: So, I know you've written-- so you've mentioned how Bridge to Terabithia came from your story about your family. You've also written from your experiences in China and Japan. My question is about Jacob Have I Loved, which is my personal favorite book. ^M00:41:46 [ Cheering and Applause ] ^M00:41:47 So I'm-- yeah. So I'm just curious where that story came from and how that came alive for you in that process. >> Katherine Paterson: I have to tell you I'll be 84 next month and my hearing-- even with hearing aids is imperfect, but I think you're asking me about Jacob Have I Loved. >> Speaker 4: Yes. >> Katherine Paterson: OK. I wrote the book because I had lovely adult friends who would say things to me like, what do you know, my mother always loved him best or if my sister hadn't so and so when I was seven-years-old, my whole life would have been different. And I thought, she's really strange, these people still hang up on their childhood jealousies. And I began to think about it, I thought, "This is a universal problem. We have more trouble with our siblings than we do with our pairs." Floyd [assumed spelling] had it all wrong. I mean, you go to the Bible, what's the first murder? And you'd go through-- and so I thought, "Hmm, I will write a book about this universal theme." And when I sat down to write, I was so angry, every morning that I sat down to the typewriter that I could barely type. And I thought, "Hmm, maybe it is not my friend's problem." But writing a book is a lot cheaper than psychotherapy. >> Speaker 4: Thank you. >> Speaker 5: Hi. Thank you so much for being here. I just wanted to-- well, OK, so in 2010, I was about nine-years-old and I had the privilege to play Mabel in the Bridge to Terabithia stage version. And I always had this question ever since 2010, which was why did you choose to use children as your protagonists in many of your books? >> Katherine Paterson: Why did I choose-- >> Speaker 5: To use children as protagonists. >> Katherine Paterson: Why do I write about children? All my books are about children. You know, if-- it's always amusing to me when people say, "When will you get to write a real book, you know, about adultery and suburbs or something?" I truly love writing for children. I think they are best readers. I don't-- none of my friends who write for adults have readers who've read their book 17, 20, 30 times. And I have new generation of readers coming up who always want their reading to be the best book they ever read. They're reading with expectation and hope. And they give you-- they're not cynical. And there are good readers and they read in depth. Whereas adults so afraid they're not going to read everything, they just read too fast. I do that myself. So I think I have the best readers in the world. I'm not-- after 40 more years still remain. Why do I want to write for books that will be remained in six weeks? I think-- I have the best readership and the best position. And I've been very fortunate through the years because I've been allowed to write what I want to write. I had the same literature [phonetic] for 40 years, more than 40 years now. And I think that's maybe something of a record. She's retired now. And I told her when she retired, I would, but here I am. So, it's been wonderful life for me and I have minutes left. Well, just go head. >> Speaker 5: Thank you. >> Katherine Paterson: You have a question? >> Speaker 6: Well, I like to but a little late. >> Katherine Paterson: Oh, but I'm supposed to go back and forth. >> Speaker 7: As my kindergarten students would say, she took my question. I was just going to open it up to say what can you say about Jacob Have I Loved, that's my absolute favorite book of yours as well. I want to change a little bit then to I'm about to be a mother of two, I'm an only child, I think identify with this even as an only child as the sibling relationship, so maybe just for the benefit of all. Any advice on motherhood of siblings? >> Katherine Paterson: I think probably I'm not the person to-- there's a chapter in this book on motherhood and then motherhood list than ideal. And-- >> Speaker 7: Which it always is. >> Katherine Paterson: And you will find out what kind of a mother I was if you read the book and not be too admiring and not ask me for advice. I'm just very grateful they all-- four of them have survived me. And have-- are still nice for me. Didn't you see that one? That's way-- >> Speaker 7: You did something great. ^M00:46:50 [ Laughter and Applause ] ^M00:46:51 >> Katherine Paterson: I don't usually call them sweet, but-- >> Speaker 7: Thank you. >> Katherine Paterson: -- anyhow, they've been fun children to live with. And I guess I was an old mother and so I was always eager to see who that would be and how they'd turn out and never occurred to me that I ever should tell them what they should turn out to be. And they've been-- as my mother just say, very satisfactory children. >> Speaker 7: Thanks. >> Katherine Paterson: So I've got two minutes left and I guess we'll take your question, I'll try to be a short answer. >> Speaker 8: OK. So good afternoon. My question is more of a general tactics of how to writing a book. I've thought about writing a book, writing something about my family history back in China during 1950s and-- from 1950s to 1970s even though we're just ordinary people, but I thought about it, but I ended up giving up because I think it will be too detailed, too much full of the life routines, things like those. So, my question is, is there any method, any kind of magic to turn all of these and routine that status quo of daily life into real magical book? >> Katherine Paterson: Any magic? >> Speaker 8: I can't find a better term in English, I'm sorry. >> Katherine Paterson: I do have a hearing problem. So what I'm hearing you saying, you wanted to write about your family and your childhood. And I think frankly, everybody should do that. I really do think, just the process itself is wonderful, and your children and your grandchildren will thank you for it. I-- There's so many things I wish I had asked my parents [inaudible] like why in the world was my mother who grew up in Georgia really before people had radios in the house. Why was she a Brooklyn Dodgers fan? >> Speaker 8: Right. Right. Right. >> Katherine Paterson: So that's the kind of question you need to ask and that's the kind of heritage you need to leave your children. And I think probably they're going o be waving those thing and telling me to shut up, but thank you so much for being here. >> Speaker 8: Thank you. ^M00:49:08 [ Applause ] ^M00:49:09 >> Speaker 1: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.