Emily Ellerbe asked Meg Medina:

You write for so many different ages. When a story comes to you, how do you decide what audience you're writing for? Do you ever change who you're writing for in the middle of a project?

Meg Medina This is a great craft question, Emily. There is no hard and fast rule on how I decide. It has to do with the object matter and what part of it I want to explore. I also consider the reader's age. So, for example, I could do a picture book about divorce or a young adult novel about divorce, but they'd be very different books. With younger children, I might focus on the fact that your parents can continue to love you, each on their own. In a YA novel, I might explore all the adult ugliness and feeling caught between them. And yes, sometimes I start writing a book one way and I realize it's meant for another age group. Most often that happens between middle grade and YA novels, since there is so much overlap...

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