Robin Benway, author of the National Book Award-winning YA novel Far from the Tree, makes her first foray into middle grade with The Girls of Skylark Lane. Twelve-year-old twin sisters Aggie and Jac have mixed feelings about moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles with their fathers. Aggie worries about change and fitting in; Jac is excited for a fresh start. The twins soon join a classmate’s ragtag softball team, and while every practice seems to end in chaos and drama, Aggie and Jac bond with their new friends as they contend with first crushes, first periods, growing up, and growing apart. Benway spoke with PW about the challenges of writing for a younger audience and pulling from her own childhood to craft an authentic narrative.

What prompted you to write a middle grade novel?

Every book that I’ve done, I’ve tried to do something different. Far from the Tree was my first book with a third person POV; A Year to the Day was written backwards; The Wicked Ones—the Disney book I did about the stepsisters in Cinderella—was my first IP project. I felt like the next step would be middle grade. It’s a slightly younger audience, but it’s also such a different world perspective.

I was also pushed on by the fact that, while I don’t have children, a lot of my friends do, and a lot of those kids, especially their daughters, are turning 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. Seeing how they’re moving through the world and seeing how they experience things and deal with things was inspiring as well.

A lot of The Girls of Skylark Lane is based on my own childhood. I think a lot of women and girls can speak to this idea of how, right when you become a tween, like right before puberty, all your female friendships sort of implode. Suddenly there’s fights, there’s backstabbing, there’s all these different things going on. It can be so confusing that people you’ve been friends with your whole life are suddenly your enemies. What brought me a lot of comfort in those times was that I was obsessed with the Baby-Sitters Club. I would read those books all the time, because at the end of each book, the girls were still friends. That friendship has endured far beyond those books into a TV show, into documentaries, into the graphic novels. That was something that I really wanted to put in the book. These girls aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They can say and do hurtful things. But at the end of the day, they apologize, and they have each other’s backs.

Was there any personal significance behind the twins joining a neighborhood softball team?

I certainly was not a sports kid at all. I was the reader of the family. But I remember my brother and all the neighborhood kids would play baseball in the street. We lived on a street that was intersected by a cul-de-sac, so it was very easy to play. This was the ’80s when we weren’t really being supervised the way that kids are now, and I just have these memories of people playing in the street and yelling, “Car!” and then you’d have to move because there was a car coming through. I remember that feeling of running around and just, whoever was around, that’s who you played with.

That was a very different time. But while the concerns and the topics are different, I really wanted to see neighborhood kids playing and being outside and doing things like that, because I think a lot of kids want to do that and want to experience that, but because of so many different circumstances, it’s not always possible.

Did writing The Girls of Skylark Lane challenge you in a way that your previous books didn’t?

Skylark Lane was challenging because I’ve written eight YA books. It might only be a four- or five-year difference in age, but it’s a very different voice. It was a challenge to make sure I wasn’t writing 12-year-olds who sounded like 17-year-olds having very complex thoughts about emotions and feelings. I don’t think that kids don’t have complex emotions about thoughts and feelings, but they don’t always have the language to explain it. Middle grade characters maybe have more outbursts or bigger feelings that they aren’t always great about expressing, which I think is age-appropriate.

What else are you working on?

I was saying earlier this year to my friend Katie Cotugno—who’s an amazing writer as well—that when I look back on this summer, I’m going to remember being really happy.

I was collaborating with Omid Scobie on an adult novel called Royal Spin, which has easily been one of the most fun creative projects of my life. I’ve been an adult way longer than I was a kid, and I enjoyed being able to explore that side of writing. I was getting ready to start promoting The Girls of Skylark Lane, sending ARCs of it out to my friends’ kids and getting their amazing responses back. I just adopted a new dog. Her name is Marnie.

I have had such a wonderful few months, and I am so grateful for them, because this business does not always give you a great few months. It can be such a roller coaster of experiences. I’m working on two projects that I love, I have a dog that I love, and I’m just really happy right now.

The Girls of Skylark Lane by Robin Benway. HarperCollins, $19.99 Oct. 1 ISBN 978-0-06-331159-6