Lasky says she loves writing all different kinds of books. Lasky especially loves writing for adolescents. I feel the same vulnerability that young people feel. I have adolescent children. When I was young, my mother used to tell me, 'People will say this is the best time of your life, but it's not.
Adolescence is a time of pain and anxiety, and stories come out of that tension.
It's a time when kids are trying to define themselves. I seem to connect with that feeling pretty well. But then I realized that you can make the characters in nonfiction as fascinating as those in fiction. The Salem Witch Trials were one historical event that fascinated Lasky, and she wrote about them in her acclaimed novel, Beyond the Burning Time . One day I found myself wondering what it would have been like if your mother had been arrested for being a witch and had been condemned to death.