THIS IS HOW YOU (don’t) KNOW how a book will turn out

Today I’m so happy to reveal the cover for THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW (Little, Brown, September 16, 2025), illustrated by Cornelia Li. This book is fewer than 300 words and is aimed at a younger crowd than my published books to date.

How did I end up with something so radically different from what I normally write?

By embracing my own messy process and constantly asking myself what I am really trying to say and questioning what the takeaway is for child readers. This post will take you through the major approaches I tried as I developed this book:

• Approach 1 — Layered text and a “how to” structure
• Approach 2 — A more simplified, lyrical voice
• Approach 3 — A picture book biography (narrative) approach
• Approach 4 — The lyrical love letter to science

THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW began its life as a biography of the Andromeda Galaxy covering almost 1,000 years. Astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi first noted Andromeda in 964 AD, and the galaxy played a critical role in measuring our own Milky Way galaxy and understanding that many galaxies comprise the universe. Pretty cool, right?

I initially was inspired by Meeg Pincus’s WINGED WONDERS, which shows how many people contributed to the monarch migration mystery. Wouldn’t it be fun to use Andromeda to show how science is a process of “standing on the shoulders of giants,” as Newton once said.

Approach 1 — Layered text and a “how to” structure

I started research in April 2020. In my early drafts that summer, I thought it would be fun to use second person (you) and to incorporate a “how to do science” element that each discovery reinforced. I used layered text with the top layer explaining simply how science works and a longer, second layer discussing a discovery related to Andromeda.

Here are some snippets from the opening of one of my earliest drafts:

What did my critique group think? Here is some actual feedback.

•“I feel like this is such a big complicated topic, and will need to be majorly simplified to convey in a picture book.”

•Is your focus on the individual “big” names in astronomy—or do you want to talk about an aspect of science and how science isn’t a straight line of advances (kind of like PB revision!). The individuals themselves are perhaps less important to that message.” (shout out to Wendy Greenley for this spot on feedback!)

Keeping in mind what was important to me — the takeaway of the messy process of science — I first tried a more lyrical approach that stripped out a lot of the “big names,” which in were distracting from my message.

Approach 2 — A more simplified, lyrical voice

Here’s what my critique group said about this approach:

“What I feel is missing is instilling that same kind of curiosity and wonder for a child reader. What will compel the child through this mystery?”

“I also wondered if there could be a stronger theme that ties it all together. It seems like it could be something small can have big impact? I also liked how it was these individuals throughout time who built off each others’ work to basically fit together pieces of a puzzle (teamwork).”

This led too…

Approach 3: Focusing the story through the lens of a single person (Edwin Hubble) using a narrative approach to carry readers through the story

Here’s what that version looked like:

And it was blah. To be honest, I really didn’t want to write this as a picture book biography. I wanted to try something new.

Here are some notes I wrote in my writer’s notebook:

What I am struggling with is POV. I want ‘how to’ using ‘you.’ … but I need to sharpen focus.

Then I brainstormed alternate approaches:

•Graphic novel and include everyone (Andromeda version)

•Tell it from the POV of Mt. Wilson (where Hubble made his discoveries)

•A book about how science happens – Keep it high level text and illustrate the rest, showing scientists from different nationalities/fields/genders

And then, for whatever reason, I asked myself, what do I really care about here? And it wasn’t galaxies and universes, Hubble, or Andromeda. It was how science really works, which is often quite different than the linear, step-by-step process we learn in school.

Asking myself those critical questions: “What am I trying to say?” and “Why will kids care?” finally led to my breakthrough.

Approach 4: The lyrical love letter to science

With that in mind, in late September 2020, I allowed myself to explode the Hubble draft. I pulled out all the “how to do science” pieces and wrote a lyrical love letter to science in second person.

This is what that looked like sketched out in thumbnails in my writer’s notebook.:

And here is what it looked like on the written page.

This final approach is the version that sold within just a couple of months and was transformed (through lots of editing and magnificent illustrations) into the book I’m proud to share with you today. THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW will be released September 16, 2025 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. It’s now available for preorder here.