My new picture book, Someone Like Me, illustrated by the wonderful Hatem Aly, will be in the world as of June 2.

Someone Like Me began life eight years ago, when I was thinking about one of my great, silent fears as a child, which was that my family and I would have to move from our home in Upstate New York to someplace unknown, someplace new, someplace where I didn’t know anyone.

A new house.

A new school.

New everything.

This fear was based on nothing concrete, but I remember lying awake at night worrying. What if we had to move? How would I cope? How would I possibly make new friends? What about everything –my treehouse, my woods and creek, my house, my beloved people and places–that I would have to leave behind?

Everything hard feels so much harder at night, doesn’t it? In one of my favorite illustrations of the book, our little girl sits awake on a bus in the dark late, late at night, worrying and wondering. The bus is shown from above, snaking through the dark countryside on its way to wherever it’s taking the child. It’s as if Hatem Aly was channeling my child self when he came up with that illustration.

I wish I could reach down into the illustration and tell that little girl that everything will be okay. That if she could see what lies ahead of her in the last few pages of the book, she will feel so reassured.

Our publisher, Two Lions Press, is hosting a giveaway on Goodreads and anyone in the U.S. is welcome to enter. Sign up here – and good luck!