When does a writer know she’s a writer?

When does she know writing will be more than just her job but a key part of her identity? I’ve read other books about writers becoming writers, and in most of them go through a process of understanding themselves. But in “Homesick: My Own Story,” Jean Fritz goes through no such process.

Ten-year-old Jean knows she is going to be a writer from the get-go but, curiously, she doesn’t actually do much writing in the story, which is a fictionalized memoir of the author’s time living in China in the 1920s. It’s almost like she’s saving it. Maybe when she gets to America she’ll write. Here, in China, she’s got a lot of livin’ to do.

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Children’s Book Club: ‘Homesick: My Own Story’ by Jean Fritz