Stuff That Has to Be Just Right: Why This Story Found Me Now 🐸✍️

Some books arrive with noise and urgency.Others arrive quietly, and then refuse to leave.

Stuff That Has to Be Just Right has been the second kind.

I didn’t sit down one day and decide to write a book about autism. What happened instead was much smaller — and much more familiar. I found myself thinking about desks. About routines. About how a tiny, unannounced change can ripple through a child’s entire day. About the children who don’t shout or disrupt when things feel wrong, but hold everything very carefully inside.

This story grew out of those moments.

After nearly thirty years working in schools — as a teacher, a school leader, and later through postgraduate study in educational psychology — you begin to notice patterns that don’t always make it into reports or meetings. You notice the children who cope by becoming precise. The ones who arrive early, who line things up just so, who feel safest when the world behaves predictably. And very often, you notice how quietly autistic girls do all of this, without drawing attention to themselves.

Emily McCloud arrived fully formed.

She’s ten. She loves frogs. She likes things to be just right — not because she’s difficult or controlling, but because order is how she survives the noise, movement, and unpredictability of school life. When things go wrong, she doesn’t explode. She freezes. And when she can, she writes.

This book also sits very deliberately within the Stuff children’s series — a collection of stories that explore neurodivergent experiences through everyday moments, humour, and honesty. The series has always been about helping children feel seen without being singled out. Stuff I Can’t Say Out Loud focused on the thoughts that stay trapped inside, while Stuff That Won’t Stay Still explored the energy, impulsivity, and creativity that come with ADHD.

Stuff That Has to Be Just Right continues that journey, but through a different lens. It centres on autism, sensory overwhelm, and the quiet power of being understood — not through dramatic events, but through the small details of school life that so often go unnoticed.

One of the turning points in writing this book was realising that Emily didn’t need long explanations or emotional monologues. She needed a system. That’s where The Frog Files came from — short, private pages where she can make sense of her day using lists, ticks, doodles, and frog levels instead of big words. They’re not written for teachers or adults or even the reader. They’re written so Emily can breathe again.

Both my professional background and my training in educational psychology have shaped this story in quiet ways. Not through labels or theory, but through an understanding of how regulation, safety, and predictability allow children to learn and cope. I’ve seen how often neurodivergent children are expected to adapt, while the environment around them remains rigid and unchanged.

What’s brought me to this book, more than anything, is a growing certainty about the kind of stories I want to tell for children. Stories that don’t ask neurodivergent characters to change in order to belong. Stories that show how understanding often begins with someone noticing — and stopping — and making a little space.

This isn’t a story about fixing autism.

It’s a story about what happens when the environment softens, just enough.

As I write Stuff That Has to Be Just Right, I keep coming back to the same thought: how many children are spending their days managing things no one else can see? And what might change if we learned to read the signs a little better?

Emily doesn’t become less autistic by the end of this book.The world just becomes a little more Emily-shaped.

And that feels like a story worth telling.

Bren 🐸✍️