I love all my char­ac­ters oth­er­wise I’d kick them out of the book. As a mat­ter of fact, in an ear­ly draft of Al Capone Does My Shirts I had Moose, Natal­ie, Piper, and two oth­er kid char­ac­ters who lived on the island. I was all the way through the draft when I real­ized, hey these boys aren’t work­ing. They were well-devel­oped char­ac­ters but they didn’t fit in the book some­how, so I boot­ed them out and I began to devel­op two new char­ac­ters: Jim­my and Annie. The char­ac­ter There­sa was com­plete­ly unplanned. One day I real­ized Jim­my had a lit­tle sis­ter and then all of a sud­den There­sa jumped on the page. I had a lit­tle trou­ble with There­sa in Al Capone Shines My Shoes because she want­ed to take over the book. But this doesn’t answer the ques­tion does it? I guess I would have to say ask­ing me my favorite char­ac­ter is like ask­ing your mom who her favorite child is … I love all my char­ac­ters in dif­fer­ent ways.