When author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in the fourth grade, his grandparents called him into the living room. “I remember thinking: Oh maybe we’re going to go on another family vacation,” he says. (The last time they called a family meeting he learned they were going to Disney World.)

But this wasn’t that kind of family meeting. Krosoczka’s grandparents had insisted on taking legal custody of him as a toddler — and they were about to tell him why.

“My grandfather sat me down on the couch,” Krosoczka recalls. “And he said: ‘It’s time we tell you the truth about your mother. She’s in jail and she’s a drug addict and that’s why she’s been gone all this time.’ ”

Krosoczka had seen his mother only sporadically since age 2. He had never met his father.

Throughout his childhood, Krosoczka kept this painful information hidden. “I didn’t tell anybody for the longest time …” he says. “When you have these addictions in your families, you sort of live this duality. You have this thing that you hold back from people and you put your best face forward.” Read more and listen to Terry Gross’s interview with Jarrett!