Katherine Applegate: Hello, my name is Katherine Applegate. It's a long name and, I like to think, a sort of writer-ly sounding name. When I was growing up, my family called me Kay, K-A-Y, but as I got older I began to use my full name, Katherine, because I like the sound of it. But the truth is, I hated my last name when I was growing up because it was so weird and unusual, and I wanted desperately to be as ordinary as humanly possible. I heard endless variations on the apple-meets-gate theme as I was growing up, the one I remember most vividly being Kay Bananafence.

The other day I was visiting an elementary school and chatting with some kids about my days of Bananafence torment, and one of them, who I believe is a writer in the making, said, "Hey, you know what? You grew up to be a writer. You showed all of them!" And I like to think she's right.