She was eleven years old. She had big brown eyes and wore her hair in puff-ball pigtails almost every day. At first glance, she looked like other girls at the summer program her age who loved listening to Justin Bieber and jumping rope. But something was different. When the other girls were turning ropes and jumping, she would run in when it wasn’t her turn and mess up whoever was jumping; she would rip the rope out of their hands. On her brother’s birthday, she wrote him a card that said she hoped he died. It wasn’t long before the other kids avoided her. And that was how she wanted it.

A renowned author of children’s stories offers parents a simple and poignant way to teach their children that despite our outer differences, we are all the same.