Then Cover to Cover, our new independent children’s bookstore, announced Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely would both be visiting....These listeners who spoke last night are storytellers. Their books enable us to slip into lives different than our own. That sounds like a pretty powerful form of listening to me.

In May I received three feedback letters from three trusted readers regarding my young adult novel in progress.  The reaction was overwhelmingly positive.  There were, of course, suggestions. 

“No one would assume that one or two books could possibly tell the story of all white people,” Linda Sue Park began.  Yet, for African American people, the publishing industry has limited their paths to success.  An African American author can write a book about slavery, the underground railroad, the civil rights movement, or the ghetto.  This is no place for the children’s publishing world to remain, not when the books on our shelves do not reflect the diversity of our population.

I know a novel is not an essay.  It’s an experience.  But I recently went to see E. Lockhart speak, and she explained the characters in a book are all in a conversation with each other, and the book itself in in conversation with other books, with what’s going on in the world.  I recently read your I Crawl through It.  Your novel has something to say.