L.P. Simone knows that kids are smart; they can tell when the grown-ups around them are smoothing something over rather than having a difficult conversation. And she also knows that kids are not exempt from the painful, complicated life experiences that even adults have no idea how to process.

When Simone was a young girl, her mother died. Her middle-grade novel Charlotte’s Ghosts (2023) is about a little girl who also lost a parent, her father. Charlotte Cross is in the seventh grade and trying to figure out how to live in a world without her father in it. She’s just moved with her mom all the way across the country, from Arizona to Virginia, and is focusing all her energy on joining the cross-country team. One day, when out on a run, Charlotte’s dog, Beau, runs up to a boy who seemingly appears out of nowhere, dressed in old-fashioned clothes:

He’s got his face buried in Beau’s neck, and he’s muttering something. Beau sits down quietly. His tail scrapes the ground behind him. “Blue, you crazy dog,” he says. “You found me!”

“It’s Beau, actually,” I say as my dog slobbers all over a stranger.

I step forward to grab Beau’s harness. The boy smells of the forest, like moist earth, and a scent that reminds me of the Fourth of July. Dead leaves and a twig cling to his hair. It’s like he’s been rolling around in the woods, and now that I’m closer, his pale skin seems almost transparent.

“So, do you go to Stonewall Jackson?” I ask, then cringe. God, C.C. You just met this guy.

The boy looks at me. His eyebrows knit together, and a muddled look crosses his face. A strand of matted, blond hair falls across his eyes, and splotches of something dark are smeared across his face.

“I’m not Thaddeus,” he says.

And then, I swear to God…he disappears.

The mysterious boy, whose name is Jeremy, grew up in Civil War–era Virginia, and the novel is told both in the present, with Charlotte, and in the past, with Jeremy.

Kirkus Reviews says that “Simone’s well-paced middle-grade novel tackles serious topics with care and consideration. The story cleverly balances the past with the present, the supernatural with realism, and action with interiority. Themes of grief, connection, and belonging underpin the narrative, as well…. Simone’s emotional prose and vivid descriptions…bring the narrative to life, right up until the affecting conclusion.”

Simone herself lives in Washington, D.C., and beyond working with kids as a retired history and writing teacher, she’s a true expert in children and young adult literature; she has both an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College and a doctorate in American young adult fantasy literature from Georgetown University.

But she didn’t approach Charlotte’s Ghosts from a detached academic perspective. She didn’t even approach it as a way to share with kids how she moved through her own childhood grief. Instead, she says that the process of writing the book was how she processed her own grief, in real time.

“Each major change in the story over the years it took me to write [it] reflected my own healing,” she says. Simone also notes that grief isn’t something you simply work through and leave in your past. “When you hit different stages in your life, you process [grief] again in different ways,” she says. “Charlotte’s Ghosts isn’t my way of saying to kids, ‘It’ll all be OK,’ because that isn’t how it works. What I really wanted to show my readers was that you can feel the love of the person you lost, even though they’re not around anymore. That’s really been my experience.”

In addition to her rigorous academic background focusing on storytelling for young people, Simone also brings her experience as a history teacher to her writing. She’s written nonfiction pieces for kids’ magazines on topics like how children spent their time in ancient Mexico, and on Queen Isabella of Spain, who played a big role in sending Christopher Columbus on his expedition. Simone’s 2012 novel The 2012 Prophecies is about the actual Mayan history that resulted in the modern, now widely ridiculed idea that the world was going to end that year. Just as Kirkus praised that book for having “the utmost respect for Maya civilization,” Charlotte’s Ghosts brings to life realistic contemporary cultural concerns of the Civil War era, like Jeremy’s mother being a Quaker (and therefore a pacifist) and the real choices families had to make around the war effort.

But beyond her academic experience, Simone also has a creative person’s pure love of writing a compelling story. “I’ve always, always, always made up stories in my head,” she says. “Mostly it was just to pass the time, back when you had to sit in a car without computers or phones to scroll through. I’d look out the window and imagine scenarios inspired by a book I was reading, or by the environment we were in.”

Simone’s creative impulses have always been focused on using narrative to help share ideas and facilitate understanding. The first story that she actually put down on paper, about a boy and a castle, was actually her way of helping her son understand what they were seeing on a trip through Europe.

In fact, Simone says that she originally sought out MFA programs because she was looking for work as a teacher, not necessarily focusing on individual publishing goals. Eventually, through her research, she chose the Vermont College MFA program because it had a heavy research element as well. “The creative writing part came from wanting to be in the classroom,” says Simone, “but also the classroom was part of wanting to write stories.”

As it turns out, using storytelling to share information is a smart approach to take for writing a good book. Simone jokes that she had “no idea Charlotte’s Ghosts was going to be so well received,” and when she realized just how much positive feedback she’s gotten, her surprise is understandable. Not only does Kirkus call Charlotte’s Ghosts “a middle-grade cross-genre standout,” but it has so far earned an astonishing 18 awards, including from the San Francisco and Paris Book Festivals.

Simone has lots of plans to continue using her creative skills to help kids learn and grow. That story she wrote down for her son, about the boy and the castle, is on its way to publication; she says it will hopefully come out sometime this year. She’s also working on a zombie book that’s set in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. She’s also written picture books, including one that came out last year and an upcoming title about how the world’s oceans are affected by human activities and pollution.

At their core, all of Simone’s books, and especially Charlotte’s Ghosts, are about recognizing the deep sensitivity kids have and affirming for them that they are never alone, even with tough experiences, whether that means connecting with an author who shares her grieving process through books or with the kids throughout history who come to life in those books’ pages. And like any caring teacher, Simone always aims for her work to be a positive force for a child. “What I want more than anything for Charlotte’s Ghosts,” says Simone, “is for kids to read it!”

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn.