Our top 25 countdown continues. Coming in at number 24, author Meg Medina. My goodness, how I loved

this episode. So much of it has stuck with me. Meg's big leap into writing, her process,

and her willingness to revisit parts of her childhood that she'd never talked about before.

Enjoy.

Meg, thank you so much for doing this.

I think about Mercy Suarez and this idea of being 11 and having a year where everything

changes.

And I think we all had that year, whether it happened at 10, 11, 12.

For you, was there a year

where everything changed? Yes. And so when I think of middle school or what was then called

junior high school, I think I had a really sharp turn south, actually. In elementary school,

I'd been a pretty happy kid.

I went to my local elementary school.

I was in the Glee Club and what my mother called La Huguera Chau.

I did all the things, right?

I did all the things.

But when it was time for junior high school, of course, the world got bigger.

And my mother moved us to an apartment closer to downtown flushing into a different school district.

And suddenly I was in a big school with a lot of kids who I didn't know of a lot who were rougher than I was.

And I just shut down completely, as I recall. My uncle died, my mother's

brother died at that time as well. So there was just a lot of trauma and on top of just the crush

of growing up. I think as adults sometimes we think back with affection for being a kid and growing up.

...