Diving into the kidlit community for the first time was daunting. There is a lingo and lexicon to learn, along with just understanding the ins and outs of this new world and the community within it. One term that jumped out at me everywhere I turned was critique groups . Authors I followed talked about theirs with awe and thanks. Everyone gushed about how amazing and helpful they were. It became a refrain I saw all over social media and all I could think was - what are they a