Kids don't talk like adults, but kids on the spectrum don't necessarily fall into the same patterns of speaking or have the same interests as other kids their age.

One advantage to having a kid on the spectrum: they tend to be rule followers. Socially, things are harder for them than most kids.

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

For a long time our son was a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.

We all want our children to be terrific, but you can't force a child into being what you want it to be.

My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.

I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them.

As a child, I always remember our home, which was a flat just on the Barnes side of Hammersmith Bridge in London, buzzing with actors such as Patrick McGee and Peter Bowles. We were a family who were always on the go.