Neither one of us were cheerleaders, right? Lin: No offense, but they were about these high school cheerleaders. I look back at that, and I kind of laugh because they were kind of terrible books.

Lin: Well, those Cheerleaders books were actually a big bonding thing for me and you. Ling: We did send a few books, like the Cheerleaders books that we both owned. Lin: I think we also sent each other books with those letters, or did I make that up, too? You were writing your dreams about becoming a Children’s book illustrator, and I’m writing back lyrics to the Bon Jovi song. It’s so interesting that it came to you later. Lin: Even back then, I knew that I wanted to do something with books. Ling: You did, yes! You said, “Someday, I’ll go into a bookstore and see a book will say ‘illustrated by Grace P. Lin: But I do remember in one of those letters, I told you that my dream was to become a Children’s book illustrator, I think. Lin: Some of them were so silly! Do you remember the letter where you just wrote me all the lyrics of a Bon Jovi song? Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. We wrote piles and piles of letters to each other. Ling: That was a very subtle and very beautiful plug for our podcast! Yes, we were childhood friends, and then my family moved to California after three years, but we stayed in touch by writing letters back and forth. We talked about how we first met in our very first episode of our podcast Book Friends Forever, right? So that's how we met the first time it was the summer before fifth grade. You should meet them.” So, they introduced us, and I remember your family came over to my family's house. Ling: We actually met because my family was moving to upstate New York and a mutual friend told my parents, “Oh, there's another Taiwanese-American family living in New Hartford. The way I wrote it became so real to me that, now, sometimes I tell people that's truly how we met. You were new, and we immediately saw each other because we were the only Asians in the whole school. Most people know that you are the character of Melody in The Year of the Dog, and the way I have us meet in that book is that we met in the school cafeteria. Grace Lin: This is a really hard question for me, actually, because in The Year of the Dog, I wrote about how we met. Alvina Ling: Hi, Grace! I think we should start by sharing how we met.

Ling & Ting by Grace Lin