![]() ![]() Your characters are mostly happy despite their situations. Does happiness come from doing what you like, or can people learn different ways to be happy? In junior high, I grew six inches and went from short to average to almost tall! That was the situation I found myself in during grade school. In my novel Short, Julia looks two years younger than the other girls in her grade. I had a friend who tried to help a boy who had been essentially kidnapped by his father, as is the case in I’ll Be There and the follow-up book, Just Call My Name. My sons went to a school for gifted children, and I saw some of the challenges those kids faced. But I have a strong relationship to the people I write about, even if they are fictional. I put my main characters in extreme situations, which I hope can be personalized by the reader. That's not just a modern condition, but what it means to be alive - to be human. Are your characters experiencing uniquely extraordinary challenges, or does everyone have challenges? ![]() And in Short, the protagonist is, well, very short. In Just Call My Name, Sam gets taken out of school and away from his mother. In Counting by 7s, the main character, Willow, loses her adopted parents in an accident. They should be required reading for middle and high school students and their parents. Her books - including Counting by 7s, Short, I’ll Be There, and Just Call My Name- feature children as central characters but deal with adult themes. In addition to writing feature films and TV shows, Holly Goldberg Sloan is also a bestselling author. ![]()
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