E251: IT’S ONLY DANCING by Jasmine Guillory

Yeah, I think, you know, I think there's about every different stage of reading.

I think there's a beauty to picture books.

I think there's a special importance to early chapter books.

Middle grade is its own special world.

And so is YA.

And I feel like books like this They just meet us where we are in that particular phase and can really feel like sometimes, at least it was for me when I was a kid, that they're real.

Like they're there seeing us, they're there with us.

And it's books like this that... that just remind us that there is so much going on in our lives.

And I love how you've put it with that 17, especially is like, you're still a kid, but you should, should know better.

And this book gives you all sorts of those back and forth complications with Jordan, with Tony, with the sister.

Oh, I loved the moment at the end when that little sisterhood bond was starting as someone who didn't have a sister until my brothers got married.

That just warmed my heart.

But even with the parents, like Jordan, negotiating and then renegotiating what she thought, what she felt, what those relationships were like.

I just feel like this book, especially finding this book in young adulthood, it just would have helped me.

So I can imagine the amount of readers who are going to find a piece of the book that's just going to connect with them as well.

Oh, well, thank you so much for saying that.

You know, I think there's a lot in this book that I think would have helped me and that in many ways did help me as I wrote it.

You know, there's some stuff in this book about kind of letting yourself embrace the struggle of learning something new, which is honestly something that I, this is my 10th book, I deal with for every book, right? Because when you're coming out of having written a book and you have like a publishable book final book there.

And then you start a first draft and you're like, this is terrible.

This is nonsense.

I'm terrible at this.

How do I do this? You have to kind of learn that all over again, how to be bad at it, how to have a bad first draft, how to keep working on something and get good at it, you know? And that's something that I have to relearn all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's also a good space to say, no matter how old you are, you can still read those books as well, because those young adults still live inside of me.

And that's who's reading this book.