I usually say writer or teacher, and then they ask me what I teach, and I say writing. And then they say: what kind of writing do you teach? And then I say poetry.

actually came to write for middle grades by accident. When I first started working on See You in the Cosmos, I just had this idea for a story about a boy and his dog trying to launch his iPod into space. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about the age of my audience; I was just trying to tell a good story.