Beginning a new book may require a certain amount of circling to find the “teller” of the story.  I happened to attend an illustrator’s workshop when first working on “Nigel & Jinx.”  (I was trying to work out how the family dealt with the addition of the stray cat to the household.)  The artist told of illustrating a book and the author objecting that the illustrations focused on the dog in the story.  “But the dog was the center of the story,” she said.

DING! That was exactly my issue.  I was focusing on the people, when the story was about the dog, Jinx, accepting this cat into the household.