I don't know. I just feel stuck, like I'm afraid to take any steps, in case they're the wrong ones.

When you trust your readers, you're hoping they will see what you see. Not every book is for every person.

Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.

But every person has to learn to accept what has happened in the past. Without bitterness. Or there is no point in continuing with life.

I think that's why I wanted to write about seventh grade. I'd say seventh grade is a time when kids are really exploring a lot and becoming aware of the world around them in a deeper way. And they just have sort of have a wider appreciation of what's happening around them. They are seeing themselves from the outside more than they had before.

I think I'm still fed by my childhood experience of reading, even though obviously I'm reading many books now and a lot of them are books for children but I feel like childhood reading is this magic window and there's something that you sort of carry for the rest of your life when a book has really changed you as a kid, or affected you, or even made you recognize something about yourself.

Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter.