Jennifer Chan comes out today!

with five starred reviews!

These Days—

Oh, hey, hello. Welcome to my love letter, where I talk about creative life, writing life, and life in general. 

Hellooo! Jennifer Chan is Not Alone is officially out in the world!!

It always feels strange when a book comes out, like I've been waiting for ages and suddenly I'm not at all ready. But despite feeling a bit unprepared, I am so excited.

This is the book I needed when I was in middle school--a book about peer pressure, fitting in, bullying, and why it's sometimes so hard to be the person you want to be.

It's also, honestly, the book I needed now--a book that let me explore what it means to feel isolated in a fraught world, and how we can work (fearlessly, hopefully) to find connection and make our communities better.

Writing this book changed me. It led me to face questions I'd been running from, let go of childhood pain, and learn a whole lot about astrophysics and aliens along the way. And now, this story belongs to you. I really hope you like it. 💙

P.S. If you'd like a signed copy, you can get one online at Third Place Books. Just be sure to write in the order notes at checkout that you'd like a signed book.

Five Starred Reviews!

And . . . this book received five starred reviews from the trade reviewers! The trade reviews only give a star to a few books, the ones they especially loved . . . and five of them felt that way about JCINA! Launching a book after WYTAT was nerve-wracking, so this is enormously validating (and a relief!) Of course I decorated my copy to reflect the stars. I think it looks pretty good. 🤗

“A mesmerizing look at bullying and its aftereffects.”

—Kirkus, starred review
 

“Keller uses a vulnerable first-person narrative that alternates between past and present to sensitively detail the emotional roller coaster of navigating changing social rules, the anxieties of being oneself, and the process of coming to terms with one’s flaws.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

 
“The emotionally absorbing story is full of thought-provoking explorations on self-confidence, forgiveness, and friendship while illuminating parallels between alien and human struggles.”

—Booklist, starred review

 
“With an appeal to a wide variety of readers, this genre fusion is highly recommended for all library shelves.”

—School Library Journal, starred review

 
“By setting the victim, the missing Jennifer, into the narrative background, Keller directs the flood light onto Mallory and company and aims responsibility (and possible redemption) right where it belongs.”

—The Bulletin, starred review

A Note --

I've said this is the book I needed at twelve, and that's because much of this story is inspired by my own experience. Like Jennifer, I was bullied in middle school.

And it wan't easy to revisit these moments. But I’m glad I did. 

I'm including my Author's Note here because it speaks to my experience and the behind-the-scenes writing of this book. It vaguely references some of the novel's plot points, so if you prefer to go into books knowing nothing, skip this. Otherwise, read on.

💙,
Tae

Author's Note, following Jennifer Chan is Not Alone

I was the girl in the bathroom—the girl pressed up against the sinks, surrounded by a group of my classmates. Some of the girls I’d been friends with, others I’d thought I was still friends with, and others I’d never spoken to before.

The bullying had started on social media when I was in middle school. At twelve, they’d written messages to and about me that were too violent to include in a novel for twelve-year-olds. They’d made plans to spike my drinks, break me, drown me.

I told myself and others I wasn’t scared. During the day, I tried to act like none of it bothered me. But I spent sleepless nights hiding under my covers, waiting for it to end.

After a couple of weeks of rapid escalation, the bullying moved from online to in person, and they cornered me in a bathroom on the last day of school.

I want to make this the worst day of your sad little life, one of them said. I hope you always remember it.

And I do.

I remember the crack in the bathroom wall, the flickering of the dim fluorescent light, the way one of them looked at me and said, Who do you think you are?

They told me I was nothing, that I would always be nothing.

I remember thinking, Don’t cry, don’t cry, until they finally left and I curled up in a stall and sobbed on the cold, grimy tile, wondering if they were right.

It felt like the end of everything.

When I told my teachers, they said there was nothing they could do; no adults had witnessed the bullying, and the school year was ending anyway. Enjoy the summer, they said. You’ll forget about this before you know it.

Not knowing where else to turn, I wrote about the Incident in my journal, as if to tell myself, This happened. This mattered.

I invented thinly veiled fiction about bullying in that journal, writing as if I could excavate my experience for explanations. Where had I gone wrong? Why were those girls so mad at me? What made them want to hurt me? I imagined answers for myself, hoping that would help me understand.

It helped a little, as writing often does, but I felt like I was missing something, like I couldn’t find the right answers or I wasn’t asking the right questions. Eventually I told myself to move on. I tried to forget about the Incident.

And that worked, kind of. We can become numb to our memories the same way we become numb to the scent of our homes—steeped in it so often, we forget there’s any scent at all. I stopped noticing my long-buried pain.

And then I started writing books about middle school.

I dug up old experiences as I visited schools, as I spoke with current students and shared my stories and listened to theirs. It was like coming home after a long journey and realizing, My goodness, my house smells like lemon peels!

I’d spent so long running from that moment in the bathroom that I felt disoriented returning to it. But students kept asking about my middle school experience, and when I told them I’d been bullied, they had so many questions.

What did you say? Why did it happen? How did you deal with it?

I found myself giving versions of the advice I’d heard from adults: You'll be okay. One day you'll forget all about this.

But my words rang hollow. Those students wanted answers, just as I had at twelve—just as I still did. And while speaking to them in those middle school auditoriums and classrooms, I was revisiting the girl I’d been. I realized I needed to tell her story. I owed that to the kids who were asking questions, and I owed it to myself, too.

A friend was puzzled when I told them about my latest writing project. Why would you return to that memory and hurt yourself all over again?

I didn’t have much of an answer yet except to say, I think I have to.

My first drafts of Jennifer Chan were similar to my middle school journal entries, all those years ago. After trying for so long to forget, I started by telling myself, This happened. This mattered.

In those early versions, I was seeking answers—and I figured that as an adult, I was finally brave enough to go to the source.

I reached out to my former bullies.

We met for coffee, or messaged, or spoke on Zoom, and I asked what had made them hurt me.

Not all of those conversations were easy. There were some people who wouldn’t acknowledge what had happened—who’d forgotten, or refused to remember.

But some remembered, or refused to forget, and they asked, What do you want to know? I’ll do my best.

Fifteen years after the Incident, I was suddenly twelve again, heart pounding, palms sweating, seeking an answer that would make sense of the world.

Why me? I asked.

They did their best. But the best they could offer was, It wasn’t personal.

And to be honest, that wasn’t the response I was looking for. After all, it was so very personal to me. If I could have been anybody—if I’d just happened to be in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time—then it was as if I didn’t matter in my own story.

But of course, this wasn’t only my story; it was theirs, too. And their answer was an invitation, in a way, because if this wasn’t personal, what was?

I realized I’d been asking the wrong questions. I’d been focused on one moment in time: Why did you say those things about me? Why did you do those things to me? But I needed to go broader, gentler: Who were you? Who did you want to become? Who have you become?

Put simply, I found myself asking the same question my bullies had once asked me: Who do you think you are?

I’d been running from the question for fifteen years. In their mouths, those words had been a challenge, an accusation, a reminder not to reach so high.

But as an adult, looking back on the past and forward to the future, I saw that the question could be bigger than that.

I’d wanted to know, What makes a bully? But I should have been asking, What makes a person?

It’s a question without an answer. Or rather, it’s a question with infinite answers.

The conversations shifted, and we talked about who we were in middle school, about our home lives and school lives, about our dreams and insecurities. My former bullies told me that they’d learned, that they’d grown. One of them confessed that she’d been angry, hurting in a way that no adult could really see, and there’d been nowhere else for her anger to go. Another told me that she herself had felt so small.

One of them shared the ways that hurting me—and hurting others—had changed her, how her actions had become a mirror that pushed her to do better and be better. Another is an activist now, trying to make the world a gentler place for kids today.

In these conversations, we navigated our way backward from adulthood to adolescence, forging a path into one moment in time. It wasn’t easy to return. But by finding a way in, we also found a way back out. And I realized that I wasn’t hurting myself all over again. Instead, I was healing, truly, for the first time.

Healing came first from acknowledging that this trauma had happened. It had hurt me. It had scared me. It had shattered my belief that the world was safe and simple. But it had also taught me to rebuild, to stand up for others, to see myself as resilient. Healing came from understanding that this experience mattered, that I mattered.

And healing came from recognizing that I am not locked in that one moment—and neither are my bullies. Healing was seeing the messiness in others and in myself. It was learning to forgive. It was realizing that change is not a given—but it is possible.

When I was twelve, afraid of my bullies and too scared to go to school, the advice adults gave me was, You'll be okay. One day you'll forget all about this. 

The first part was true. The second part wasn’t.

And I still don’t have answers to all the questions students ask me. But to those kids, I’ll say this:

If you are being bullied, if you know someone who’s being bullied, or if you’ve hurt someone—know that one day you will be okay. This is not the end of everything.

And maybe one day you will forget this experience.

But that is not my wish for you. My wish for you is that one day you will heal from it and grow from it.
I wish that one day you will see your experiences not as an end but as a beginning—the beginning of knowing yourself as someone who forges pathways and fosters empathy, someone who believes in goodness and possibility, someone who sees, even in the darkest nights, an infinite expanse of stars.

I hope that day comes soon.

In the meantime, tell a parent, teacher, or trusted loved one. Find safe spaces in your school, in your home, in your heart. And know that you matter. Know that you are not alone.

Middle school can make you feel like you're totally alone in the universe... 
But what if we aren't alone at all?

 
Mallory Moss knows how the world works. After meeting the cool girl, Reagan, she finally has a best friend, and Reagan makes Mallory feel like she belongs, like she can fit in this infinite universe, as long as she follows Reagan’s simple rules: wear the right clothes, control your image, know your place. 

But when Jennifer Chan moves into the house across the street, those rules don’t feel quite so simple anymore. Because Jennifer is different. She doesn’t seem to care about the laws of middle school, or the laws of the universe. She’s willing to embrace the strange, the unknown… the extraterrestrial.  She believes in aliens—and what’s more, she thinks she can find them. 

Then Jennifer goes missing. The adults say she ran away…but where is she going? And why? Using clues in Jennifer’s journals about alien encounters, Mallory attempts to find her. But the closer she gets, the more Mallory has to confront why Jennifer might have run … and face the truth within herself.

In her first novel since winning the Newbery medal for When You Trap a Tiger, Tae Keller lights up the sky with this insightful story about shifting friendships, right and wrong, and the power we all hold to influence and change one another. No one is alone.

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