Square One

Theo is twelve. In a few weeks, his family will leave the only home he has ever known. Before they go, his father wants to write something down. This is what he writes. SQUARE ONE is the story of a boy whose clock has always run on its own time, and the family that learned to walk beside him. It begins on the day Theo's mother decided she wanted him, even when the world was not yet sure. It moves through the year of his small heart that had not finished building. Through the line of plastic animals on a preschool carpet. Through the long bus rides and the smaller rooms and the bigger rooms. Through a fifth-grade parade nobody saw coming. Through the middle school years when Theo built something the school had not known to expect. And finally to an airport gate where a thirteen-year-old boy asked his father a question: What if I can't do it again. The book is a father's letter to his son, written before a long move. It is also, quietly, a letter to any kid who has ever been told they are weird, or behind, or not quite right. To any kid who has ever been called dumb when they were just thinking at their own pace. And to the parents and teachers and strangers around those kids — who learn, often slowly, that the job is not to fix children but to walk beside them. For readers of EDUCATED, FAR FROM THE TREE, and A MAN CALLED OVE. For families who have ever begun again. Names have been changed. The heart, the line, the parade, the airport, and the boy are real.