The TeachingBooks Blog
It had never occurred to me that authors could be (nearly) as important as teachers and librarians in the process of a child becoming a reader. 
Much to my surprise, the question I heard most often, phrased in different ways, was: How do I write queer characters that are three-dimensional?
Years later, when I embarked upon writing The Underneath, I thought about how we are all subjected to hard things in our lives. We all experience pain.
For my upcoming book, I had to imagine what it might be like to be related to the Queen of England. To better imagine, I turned to research.
But not everyone fights a war with blade or bullet. Some were fighting their own shadow war of secret letters, false names, fake passes and perilous bluffs. I became fascinated by the spies - cunning, bold, ingenious and quite often female.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with stuffed animals. I had 40 or 50 of them, enough to sag a bookshelf. They didn’t quite have distinct personalities, but in my mind Mrs. Lion, Mr. Hawk, and Princess Panther were brimming with life.
