More Jack Gantos

We have the ability as writers and human being and bring it to the smallest of creatures like a spider in Charlotte's Web, he says. Or Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. You start with those characters, you hook up with them, then you get into the rich settings.

As you are building a book, start working those character. They'll become powerful. Give them room to grow. Then emesh them in the setting you create. You always always are looking for the double ending in a book, he says--the physical and the emotional.