Chicago, with its big newspapers and major broadcasting stations, couldn't have been a better city to start a journalism career.

As a kid, I'd get up at 3 in the morning during school vacations to help my father on his bakery-truck route. He didn't get a vacation from that schedule.

By the time I got to Northwestern University in 1930, I was a football bum more interested in being an All-Star player and signing on with a pro team than going after a newspaper job.

My father, a bakery-truck driver, was the epitome of the work ethic that probably kept me knocking out columns six days a week for a rough total of 12,600 over 50 years.

Among my books, the ones that sell best are for readers between the ages of 8 and 12. According to a study by the Association of American Publishers, the largest area of industry growth in 2014 was in the children and young adult category.

There was this hip-hop collective called People Crew. And at the time in Korea, there was no real place to access rap music. So People Crew used to host this summer school program, which taught rapping and dancing. I begged my mom to attend that school to learn how to rap.

We all know that Americans love their statistics - in sport, obviously. And in finance too.

I was a huge rereader, so I've read all the Chronicles of Narnia, at minimum, 13 times each. In reading that series, I realized that someone had written those books, and that was that person's job. And I thought, 'That is the job for me. That is the job I'm going to have when I grow up.'