It’s so exciting to encounter authors right as their careers tremble on the edge of shooting off into the skies. It might be a grand splash of an arrival, with national bestseller repercussions, or it may be a quieter arrival, in which the school and library world suddenly seems to have discovered and fallen in love with an author en masse. When you read a fresh book and know that it’s going to be a game-changer, it’s a brilliant feeling. It’s like a low thrill that builds in your blood and grows stronger and stronger as your joy and delight in a book is shared by more and more readers. I have that feeling again! More on that in a bit.

Jason Reynolds already had three great novels under his belt by the time 2016 rolled around, but while he was definitely on the radar of the savvy YA community, he hadn’t yet reached his full audience. 2016 was the year that Reynolds’s double-header of As Brave As You and Ghost hit the shelves, and when we read them, it was like being hit with a lightning bolt of happiness. This much talent in one writer? Crazy! It was clear that the children’s book world would never be the same. Everyone who read either book knew immediately that the man had a golden pen; the icing on the cake is that he is dedicated to lifting young readers and carries an amazing presence that inspires a nation of fans.
I had that same feeling meeting Angie Thomas at a Harper dinner the same year, the fall before The Hate U Give came out. Reading that ARC was like drinking fresh water. We had that thrill of hope, knowing that this book was the real deal. It felt clear that the book—and Angie and her writing future—were going to be major. I certainly didn’t anticipate just *how* gargantuan the reach of that book would be (a movie! in less than two years!!), but the telltale thrill of a career about to be born was humming.
The metaphor of writerly success as a rocket launch or shooting star is misleading, of course. Those career-changing moments come after years of dedicated work. It probably seemed to many readers that the bright star Kate Messner suddenly burst onto the school and library scene with several bestselling books to her credit, but she built the path to that tipping point with unbelievable discipline, hard work, and a boatload of talent. Cynthia Lord and Lynda Mullally Hunt are two more authors whose reach seemed to bloom suddenly, like ink spreading across a broad sweep of paper, though of course they had been working for years to reach that point.
I’ve been thinking about the threshold moment recently, because a writer moved to our town and I have that same buzzy feeling about her career. I think she’s going to be big, and reach kids the way these writers I’ve mentioned reach kids: right in the heart of their hearts. Her name is Lindsey Stoddard, and her lovely debut middle grade novel, Just Like Jackie, was published last January by HarperCollins. It earned two starred reviews right out of the gate from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, and School Library Journal called it a “home-run story that will resonate with all who feel they might not fit into the perfect definition of a family.”
Now her second book, Right as Rain, is coming out on February 12, and it confirms my feeling that Lindsey is poised at the tremble right before the tipping point that will see her becoming a major voice in the middle-grade world. Her characters have that irresistible combination of toughness and vulnerability, honesty and humor and anger and confusion and kindness and realness that kids are hungry for and recognize in themselves. Lindsey herself is also the real deal — an avid reader, a committed writer, someone who values and takes seriously children’s challenges, struggles, ideas, and passions. I suspect that within in a year or two, Lindsey’s dance card will be full to bursting with requests for author visits, and she, too, will be a household (schoolhold, libraryhold) name.
We’re hosting Lindsey’s launch party for Right as Rain next month, and it truly feels like a launch. The moment of witnessing a career about to blast off is one of the great joys of being a children’s bookseller. Watching an author’s work come to fruition and reach a wide and loving audience feels—to heap on one final simile—like being part of a great, endless garden with bursting blooms we get to help tend. You can’t always predict what will happen, but sometimes you get that feeling, and part of you just knows: it’s going to be good.