Before the pandemic, Author Adam Gratz would visit around 100 middle schools a year, where students were always giving him ideas and suggestions about what parts of history he should write about, including 9.11. It took Mr. Gratz many years and a few tries before he was able to write his novel, Ground Zero, because for him, 9.11 continued to be a painful memory. But he came to understand that middle schoolers yearned for a book about it; for them (not having been born at the time) 9.11 was history.