Hello and thank you! I wish I could travel back in time twenty-five years and tell the high school version of me sitting in class right over there at CRLS [Cambridge Rindge and Latin School] that I’m getting this Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor today. Her mind would be blown.

It’s wonderful to be here in my hometown with my mom and being honored for a book starring my real-life dog. Also, it’s particularly wonderful getting this type of acknowledgment for Nose to Nose because, as one seven-year-old put it, “There is so much pee in this book!” Yes, this is a book about dog pee.

Photo: Shenwei Chang.

When this idea struck me — to tell a story through dog markings in a neighborhood — I laughed out loud alone in my room, which felt really good at the time. It was during COVID, when I was taking long walks with my dog and becoming acutely sensitive to the nature all around me, even in a city like New York. Nature was everywhere, mysterious and happening despite us humans. I think it’s a big mistake we make to think of nature as out there, two hours from the city, when in fact we are living in it at all times. I began reading a lot of books on animal communication and got pretty excited by how much invisible interaction and conversation might be happening among the dogs in my neighborhood through smell.

I was also witnessing online conversations spinning with misinformation and accusations…and it sort of fell into place to write about a community panic…or as my editor noted, a dog getting canceled.

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2025 BGHB Picture Book winners.]

In all my books, I would like to delight children with jokes while also offering them some helpful insight into life. It is a scary thing to be misunderstood. But in this story Toby faces his problem nose to nose and approaches the scary moment of confrontation with optimism and a light heart.

Particularly now, I wanted to give kids an example of ways a seemingly impossible conflict might be worked out through engagement and connection. I wanted to do this while making them laugh. I wanted to do it through dog pee, and I wasn’t sure if it was going to work.

So thank you so much to the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards judges for seeing the layers of meaning as well as the fun of this story and for giving it this honor. It means a great deal to me.

From the January/February 2026 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2025 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB25.

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