Coming of age? Don't worry, you're not alone. We're all coming or going to some age or another, be it a space or stone. Hopefully you or your favorite middle-grade reader can relate to some of these stories. You might not meet vampires or travel back in time through a drain pipe or a milk cartoon, but you will be transported somewhere––to a zoo, a big top, or maybe even the country's largest dump if only for a couple hundred pages. I live in the best city of all, New Orleans, adore all three of my boys, spoil my bulldogs and dream of long-boarding off the coasts of distant tropical islands.