Well aware of the stuff involving the flashbacks to Chilton Takes Charge (one of my favorite SGR stories btw) and also the 3-year timeskip between SGR and BM, but in Author Unknown, Lottie said she was 8 when Shelley first met her early in the year, so you’d assume she turned 9 later that July, which is then followed by the start of Giant Days that September.

Did the math with both your timeline and also used the fact that SGR is concurrent with the years it ran from (2002-2009) to get the number I came to. This is helped by both of Lottie’s Giant Days appearances (both in the first half of the year) saying she’s 10 and 11 respectively.

None of this really matters at all to the reading experience, but it’s fun to figure these things out.