Lauren Kate: Hi, I'm Lauren Kate and I am the author of One True Wish. It is my debut middle grade novel about a skeptical fairy who does not believe in children.

For a while, I had been circling the idea of a group of children who resemble the group of friends that I had growing up in Texas who finds something one day in the woods. I knew I wanted there to be trouble and intrigue and mystery with this thing that they had found, but for a really long time, I wasn't sure what the thing was.

One night I was putting my daughter to bed, she'd just lost a tooth and she was putting her tooth under her pillow. She asked me if I thought fairies ever wondered if children were real, the way children wonder if fairies are real. As soon as she said that, I saw the fairy who might not believe in children, who might really wonder and want them to be real, but not be able to fully believe. The next morning when I was trying to think about these kids finding the thing in the woods, I knew that it was this particular fairy.

These characters are inspired by a real group of friends that I had as a middle school age child. There was one friend whose house had these two very remarkable trees that we used to climb and hide in, and we really thought we were disappearing from the world. There were four of us who spent a whole lot of time tucked away in the boughs of those trees, and I brought some modern touches to the kids, but generally they reflect my real circle of friends from that era.

I think I knew that this fairy needed to be their secret. I didn't want anyone else outside of these four children to have access to the fairy, to ever see it or experience it. It required a lot of maneuvering. Were they only going to keep the fairy in this secret spot in the woods? If they ever took the fairy out, what were the dangers?

There ends up being a scene where one of the characters sneaks the fairy away to a symphony performance, and the fairy, of course gets out of the bag and onto the stage. Just sort of dealing with how you keep such a remarkable secret to yourself as a child. It was a challenge and it was one of the most fun things about writing the book.

I think I really love digging into the friendships between the kids. I mean, there's a lot of, there's fantasy and there's magic, and there's humor in the book, but my stories always really come down to the dynamics of the characters and how they change over time. There's an old best friendship here. These two main characters have been friends since they were really young children, and now they are beginning to go through puberty and things are moving in different directions for both of them. There's this bittersweet new tension to their relationship that, I don't know, I thought it was very fun and pretty touching to go back and experience that growing pain.

I think for me, this book is a lot about the power in understanding what you want and the power in knowing that you can get it for yourself. I think there's a lot of beauty in wishing on a star, in believing in magic, in hoping that there's a hand and a force that's bigger than yours that can fix things for you. But I love the idea that in the end, these kids had to save the fairy. They had to be the ones to grant their own wishes, and that's where the greatest magic for them resides.

This is an excerpt from One True Wish.

Van came to an elm tree whose exposed roots jetted up around its trunk like the arms of a star. The roots were gnarled and thick, almost as tall as Van. The sound was coming from the other side. They propped their elbows on the elm roots and peered over her.

For several moments, they couldn't get their mind around what they were seeing. A creature lay face up, twitching in a pile of leaves. It was much smaller than Van, about the size of a new baby, but its face was mature, fine-featured with a long nose and pointed chin. Its face made it look like it was Van's age, 12. They wore a shiny green dress of unusual fabric and had tangled red hair splayed out in all directions.

"No way," Van whispered. Swiping off their glasses, cleaning them on their sleeve, and setting them back on their nose.

Now, Van noticed two dusty gray wings extending from the creature's back. "You're seeing things," Van told themself under their breath. A couple of years ago, this thought wouldn't have occurred to them. In Ireland, children were raised on a diet of fairy lore, and there were reasonable people like Van's very own Gran, who actually believed.

When their parents separated, Van's first instinct had been to go to the Fairy Hill near their aunt's and make offerings, begging the fairies to put their parents back together. By the time the divorce was final, things were different. Van was different. They've sworn off fairies. So this thing could not be a fairy because Van did not believe in fairies.