In My Own Words: Kit Alderthorn

I write for the kid sitting in the back of the classroom who has been told, in a hundred small ways, that their anger is a problem.

That was me, once. The kid who felt too much, too loudly, about things that adults said weren't worth feeling about. I read voraciously because books were the only place where feeling too much was treated as a superpower rather than a diagnosis. The characters who mattered to me weren't the chosen ones — they were the ones who chose. Who looked at an unfair world and said: no. Not this. Not here. Not to me or anyone I love.

I write all my first drafts longhand in spiral notebooks, because there is something about the friction of a pen on paper that slows my brain down to the speed of a feeling. I have a wall covered in hand-drawn maps of every world I've created, and each one has a spot marked 'here be you' — not 'here be dragons,' because the dragons aren't the point. The reader is.

Young readers don't need simpler stories. They need braver ones. Stories that say: yes, the world is complicated and scary and unfair. And also: you are not alone, you are not too much, and your anger is not a flaw. Every protagonist I write has a comfort food that appears in at least three scenes, because comfort is not weakness — it's the thing that refuels you for the next battle.

My chapters end on hooks because I want the reader to feel the way I felt as a kid: desperate to turn the page, unwilling to stop, reading under the covers with a flashlight because the story had its teeth in me and I didn't want it to let go. But I also write friendship scenes that carry as much weight as action scenes, because the friendships you forge at twelve are the ones that teach you who you are.

Suzanne Collins taught me urgency. Ursula K. Le Guin taught me depth. Rick Riordan taught me that accessibility isn't the same as simplicity. I never talk down to my readers, because the fastest way to lose a young person's trust is to condescend to them. My mentor figures are flawed but genuine, because kids deserve to see that adults make mistakes and survive them. And there's always a moment of quiet before the final act, because bravery isn't loud — it's the silence before the decision.

The adventure is you. It always has been.