Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, #2)

by Seanan McGuire

This, you see, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them.

It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.

She had tried to make sure they knew that there were a hundred, a thousand, a million different ways to be a girl, and that all of them were valid, and that neither of them was doing anything wrong.

The trouble with denying children the freedom to be themselves—with forcing them into an idea of what they should be, not allowing them to choose their own paths—is that all too often, the one drawing the design knows nothing of the desires of their model.