Being an advocate for children — and having life-changing advocates of her own — has shaped Cindy Kadohata’s career. Novels written by the award-winning children’s writer such as “A Place to Belong” and “The Thing About Luck” contain messages from her coming-of-age journey and memories of her childhood, growing up in a small town with a brilliant sky.

Returning to her alma mater, Kadohata remembers one question from Dennis Vellucci, a former graduate student and teaching assistant at USC, that shifted the course of her career.

“At the end of the semester, the teacher said, ‘What are you planning to do with your life?’” Kadohata said. “He said, ‘Well, I think it would be a waste if you didn’t do creative writing.’”

Encouraged by her old roommate, Caitlyn Dlouhy, who would eventually become her editor, Kadohata pushed herself to write her first children’s book, which went on to win the Newbery Medal in 2005.

The day Kadohata was to submit the nationally recognized “Kira-Kira” manuscript, her dog, Sarah, died, changing the direction and depth of the novel. With the encouragement of her boyfriend, Kadohata wrote down her feelings amid the grief and incorporated them into the book.

“There’s a scene in [“Kira-Kira”] where the older sister is dying, and she’s kind of almost envious of [a] moth, which is going to be living after [her],” Kadohata said. “That was something I saw my dog do.”

Kevin Stemmler, who met Kadohata in a fiction workshop at the University of Pittsburgh, credited her success to her truth-telling and her formation of characters that fiction did not typically deal with.

“Part of the appeal of her writing, for me, was that she was doing what I was hoping to do as well, which is to celebrate voices that were more diverse and that didn’t get represented,” Stemmler said.

Stemmler referenced Kadohata’s novel, “The Floating World,” which he promoted during his time teaching for the value and inspiration it provided to budding writers.

“It demonstrated that you carry with you all the experiences that you have from your life, but in particular from education and from college,” Stemmler said.

While he was a professor at Clarion University, Stemmler invited Kadohata to speak at an event for Sigma Tau Delta, an international English honor society.

“It’s just a matter of pride for me to be able to support and promote my friends, or just good books in general,” Stemmler said. “She’s been one of the main people I’ve been championing all of my life.”

Kadohata continues to maintain relationships with friends who lifted her up in her early career days. Jill Birdsall, a former classmate, remembers being impressed by how methodical Kadohata was in writing short stories to be published in The New Yorker during their time as classmates for the creative writing MFA program at Columbia University.

“She was a very hard worker, always writing,” Birdsall said. “I remember being struck by the world that she brought forward [in our workshops], like, [sharing] that her father was a chicken sexer.”

Kadohata finds importance in dialing into the writing process to flesh out a book’s theme and messaging.

“I always think of writing like the way they describe hitting a baseball,” Kadohata said. “When you first go up to the big leagues, you can’t see the ball because it goes so fast, and you almost have to get into this zone in your head.”

The main difference between writing for a children’s book versus an adult book? According to Kadohata, it’s finding your inner child.

“You have to be like, ‘I’m 12 years old, and this is what I think,’” Kadohata said. “You have to really channel the little girl that’s still inside of you.”

Kadohata wants to inspire kids to emulate the resilience she weaves within the characters that fill the pages.

“I always want the main characters to go through hardship and for the kids to see that there’s always a path forward,” Kadohata said.

A return to her undergraduate campus for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 27 is what Kadohata calls a “time warp.” Amid the construction of new buildings and changes within USC, the festival itself remains a constant to the author.

“It’s one of the best festivals, maybe the best in the country,” Kadohata said.