Jason Reynolds: Hello, my name is Jason Reynolds. I am the author of As Brave As You, and I want to tell you a bit about it. I usually write books about city kids, kids who are in Brooklyn or in some sort of space that's really, really urban and lots of cars, and trucks, and buses, and people, and noise, and sounds, and smells, and all of that kind of thing. This time I wanted to take city boys out of the city and put them somewhere really, really quiet. The reason why is because I grew up a kid who had to go down south to visit his family in the summertime, and I always thought it was so fun to take my city self and then all of a sudden be in a southern space where everything was so different.

I remember the first time I had sweet tea or the first time my grandma made me grits. I remember hanging out with my cousins who were in the south and watching them run around in the yard with no shoes and socks on, and me thinking that was so weird. I remember the first time I saw a dog that stayed on the outside of the house, which was strange for me because for me in the city, dogs belonged on the inside of the house. All of these interesting cultural differences, I wanted to bring to life in this book to show that there's value in the city, but there's also value in the country, and that for these two young boys, Genie and Ernie, they have to learn this the hard way.

Besides that though, I wanted to talk about how funny it is to grow up thinking that you had to do a certain thing and be a certain way to be considered brave. Sometimes those things that we use to qualify what it means to be brave gets us in a lot of trouble, and that often times the bravest thing you could do is say, "No." The bravest thing you could do is to say that you're afraid. I wanted to make sure that I delved into that in this really, really cool tale, at least to me, in this funny, funny story about brotherhood and family that is As Brave As You.