From Ursula
Ursula Nordstrom edited and published some of the greatest writers and illustrators for children: Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Ruth Krauss, Garth Williams, Margaret Wise Brown, and many more. I like to look through her collected letters for joy and inspiration when the creative slog feels longer than usual.
In 1953 she wrote to Meindert Dejong:
“Did I ever tell you that, several years ago, after the Harper management saw that I could publish children’s books successfully, I was taken out to luncheon and offered, with great ceremony, the opportunity to be an editor in the adult department? The implication of course, was that since I had learned to publish books for children with considerable success perhaps I was now ready to move along (or up) to the adult field. I almost pushed the luncheon table into the lap of the pompous gentleman across from me and then explained kindly that publishing children’s books was what I did, that I couldn’t possible be interested in books for dead full finished adults, and thank you very much but I had to get back to my desk to publish some more good books for bad children.”
Read MoreMean Girls and Elementary School
So it happened a while back. Probably it happens to most kids eventually. My daughter was friends with a Mean Girl. You know, there were the promises of friendship and the gifts and the insults and the “I won’t play with you if you don’t do what I say.”
I told my brother and he yawned and said, “You can’t choose your kid’s friends.”
I told my writers’ group and we spent a good twenty minutes reviewing who said what to whom and hashing out the power dynamics. I mean, it’s material, people.
I promise, I don’t try to fight my daughter’s social battles for her, despite heavy temptation. And who knows, maybe this other kid’s mother also thought her daughter was friends with a Mean Girl. Probably they will both go to college despite all of this and grow up to live productive lives.
But I wonder–is it even harder for those of us who create children’s literature to keep that bit of distance that lets our kids become themselves? I swear, I had to bite my tongue when my girl came home from school so I didn’t ask breathlessly, “What did she do TODAY?” Oh, the bitter politics of the playground, the crushing anxiety about whether a friend of today is a friend for tomorrow, the dance of who sits next to whom. It’s not just my memories–it’s my work life. I take a pen in my hand and relive it over and over again.
(In my latest book, however, I made my main character a ninja who can solve social issues among her peer group by kicking people in the head. So there.)
Read MoreSo Why Do You Write for Kids?
The author at one and a half–in Iowa, just like Bill Bryson
People ask this a lot, and sometimes it’s hard to find a better answer than, “Um….because I like to.” The truth is that kid’s book are my favorite kind of literature–direct, unpretentious, powerful, concise, beautiful, varied, exciting, and fascinating. Honestly, I can’t figure out why all these authors write books for boring adults. But I am too polite to say this (most of the time).
Sometimes somebody else says it better. Bill Bryson, for one. This is how he answered an interview question inquiring why he wrote a memoir of Iowa childhood. “All childhoods are really very, very interesting and also very, very funny. And I think it’s a strange thing that we have this intensely felt period of our lives, you know, twenty years or so of really really strongly felt experiences, and then we get to be grownup and we forget all about it. It seems to me that childhood is actually the most important part of your life, the part where, really, you have all your strongest feelings and all of your most vivid experiences, and I wanted to write about that.”
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews