Escape from Home

I had been vis­it­ing schools that year, impor­tant­ly, long before the lengthy Har­ry Pot­ter books were so pop­u­lar. I had begun ask­ing stu­dents what they were read­ing. A sur­pris­ing num­ber of them were telling me they were read­ing nov­els by Stephen King. The sur­prise— (to me and to their teachers)—was that these kids were read­ing tru­ly long books. More­over, they were read­ing them very much on their own. The les­son? If they liked the sto­ries, kids would read long books.

Hav­ing already pub­lished books that had become popular—for instance, The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle—I had become used to the ques­tion, “Are you going to do a sequel?” Oth­er books of mine had elicit­ed that same question.

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