When I was little I used to stand on our porch and look up at the sky. We lived way out in the country on a hundred and twenty acres of woods and fields and there were no lights visible other than the ones in our own house. On a clear night, the sky glowed with stars, thousands and thousands of stars, pinpricks of glimmering light.

It was almost unfathomable to me that the stars were always there, even when the sun came up and the sky turned blue.

So many things are invisible but real. In Someone Like Me, my brand-new picture book illustrated by the wonderful Hatem Aly, a little girl and her family are moving. As she says goodbye to the people and places she loves, she wonders about her new, unknown home. She looks up on a warm summer night, when the moon and stars are the only light, and wonders: will they still shine as bright once she’s out of sight?

Is home the place she used to be? Is home somewhere ahead? Is home a place inside her heart?

As someone who writes but doesn’t illustrate picture books, I try always to hold only the vaguest of images in my mind for a picture book so that the artist is free to do their thing. When the first sketches from Hatem came floating into my inbox my first feeling was Ohhh, that’s what she looks like. I love Hatem’s artwork and how he brought this little girl to lovely, shimmering life on the page.

To celebrate the publication of Someone Like Me on June 2, Two Lions Press is hosting a giveaway on Goodreads for U.S. readers: One hundred digital copies will be given away! The giveaway is open now through June 2. Here’s the link to enter.

Illustrator
http://www.metahatem.com/
Bluesky / instagram

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter