It occurred to me: “What if this is what I do? Maybe I write for kids to help me get through the days of dealing with grown-ups. Maybe kids are the remedy for the news.”

So one night, when the news became too much again, I wrote a book called The Someone New. It’s about a very nervous chipmunk named Jitterbug who is afraid to welcome someone new to her forest, specifically a wonderful snail named Pudding who has to leave his home after a flood. In the end (spoiler alert!) Jitterbug learns from her friends that new can be scary, but kindness is stronger than fear. I think you get the metaphor.

Did I write this for kids? Of course I did. Grown-ups don’t want to read books about nervous chipmunks, and otters named Duffles and Nudge. Their loss, honestly—they are solid otters that make some really good points. But I also wrote it because, in my heart of hearts, “welcome someone new” and “kindness is stronger than fear” is what I want to tell adults.

Kids encounter new things all the time—new kids at school, new experiences, even new foods. It makes sense to be a little fearful of them. But unlike adults, kids are open to change. If you give them new information, they don’t immediately get defensive or call it #fakenews. They take it in, and if it makes sense to them, they try to incorporate it into their lives.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump tweeted that four U.S. citizen members of Congress should go back to the “crime infested places from which they came.” Just reading it was a gut-punch. Less than 24 hours later, crowds at a Trump rally chanted, “Send her back!” about Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—again, a U.S. citizen.

I felt helpless: Is this just the America we live in now?

I didn’t know what to do, so I did the adult thing and took to Twitter. I offered to give away five copies of The Someone New. Did I think I was going to make a dent in all the horribleness that was going on? Absolutely not. Was it a way to make myself feel like I was doing something, when I had no idea how to help? For sure.

But something happened. A few minutes after I made the offer, a woman I had never met messaged me—she wanted to send me money so I could donate more books. She didn’t want anyone to know her name. She was just reading the same news I was and wanted to do something.

Great. So I was going to give away 10 books. Except just as I started to type that, I got another message—a friend who felt helpless and thought that maybe giving away another five books about how kindness is stronger than fear might help. So 15 books—until it was 20 because one girl I hadn’t talked to since high school got int ouch, and then 25 thanks to a stranger who was terrified of being the kind of person who hears people chanting “send her back” and does nothing, and then within a couple of hours it was well over 50 books and I had to say STOP DONATING BOOKS BECAUSE I AM NOT TOTALLY SURE I AM EQUIPPED TO MAIL THIS MANY BOOKS AND ALSO I AM CRYING.

I went to bed feeling…hopeful? I woke up to a phone call from my publisher, who said, “Why don’t we donate all those books? So all the money people were spending on books can go to a charity for immigrant kids.” And they did, and it did.

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