Being a grown up is highly over rated. Just be an author.

She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative.

I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so.

Saying everything is okay doesn't make you a grown-up.

Telling an adult to go see something for themselves always works. They never take your word for it. They always, always, have to go see, and Hungry was no different.

Only children believe they're capable of everything.
They're trusting and fearless; they believe in their own power and get exactly what they want.
When children grow up, they start to realize that they're not as powerful as they thought and that they need other people in order survive.
Then the child begins to love and to hope his love will be requited; and as life goes on, he develops an ever-greater need to be loved in return, even if that means having to give up his power.
We all end up where we are now:
Grown-ups doing everything we can to be accepted and loved.