A Cover Story

Gorgeous cover art by Nick Blanchard

I read voraciously as a kid. Especially when I was a “middle grade” kid, the kids I love to write for now. I was homeschooled from grades 6-8, and most Fridays we’d go to the public library where I’d check out as many books and magazines as my library card would allow. (The maximum was 30 at a time.)

I read a lot of my favourites over and over. I’d imagine myself as a Hardy Boy, or a classmate of Bruno and Boots at Macdonald Hall. I loved those stories.

But for all the books I devoured, I rarely saw kids who looked like me on the covers.

I love lots of things about the cover of my debut novel, THANKS A LOT, UNIVERSE. But my favourite part is that Ezra looks a little like me when I was thirteen. (Only he owns much cooler glasses than I wore at thirteen!)

I’m proud and excited that I get to write about Black kids, biracial kids, queer kids… all the kids that middle-grade me subconsciously wished I was seeing in the pages of my favourite books back when I was daydreaming about placing myself in those worlds. Those books inspired me to build worlds of my own, where we could exist and have our own adventures. I can’t wait for readers to find their way into those worlds—and maybe be inspired to create some of their own.