More From Bruce Hale

Bruce brought down the house. His song told us of the importance of loving and being loved. He said his former editor Micheal Stearns kept a post-it in his office that read "Where's the heart?" He looked for it in every story he worked on.

Middle grade writers, says Bruce, can be passionate readers, but often their interest in begins to wane as they get older. Four things he's learned about middle graders: they are curious, willing to play, helpful, and distracted. They have a lot going on--we have to writer both what they want and what they need in a story. It's important to talk to middle graders, as way as your own inner child. Mine your childhood, he says.

Bruce said he was a TV addict as a kid--then one day, his television died and he began to read and read voraciously.