In late April I attended the Jane Addams Book Award announcement at Chicago's Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the actual location where the crusader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient supported immigrants and advocated for social justice and racial and gender equality.
The question I'm most often asked by kids is, "Where do your ideas come from?" I always give a concrete answer, like "Someone suggested that to me" or "It happened in my childhood." And while those answers are true for some of what I write, many of my ideas come from somewhere else. But it's hard to put my finger on just where that somewhere else is.