Children’s Literature

Get Your Author Out of the Library

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Nov 18, 2015 in Author Visits, Children's Literature, Educators & Librarians | 0 comments

I recently visited the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) at their National Convention in Columbus Ohio, which is a far hipper town than you think. For one thing, they have this car driving around downtown! Look closely and you’ll see that, yes, those are Babie doll legs sticking up from the top.

At the AASL, I regaled the librarians with advice gleaned from 10 years of coming to schools as a visiting author. Would you like to hear some of the gems?

1) Convey enthusiasm. Talk about your author visit as if it is going to be a blast, with everybody from students to principal to teachers to custodian. The excitement spreads out from you.

2) Share information. From early on, tell your staff, your teachers, and your students who will be coming, why you chose her, and why she’s cool.

3) Get the books. Buy them, borrow them, steal them if you have to, but make sure each kid reads at least one book.

4) Make your students into hosts. Rather than telling them, “We’re going to do something amazing for you,” tell them, “Something amazing is happening at our school and we need your help.” Recruit them to make displays, greet the author, guide her to the library, write an article about her for the school newsletter–anything that turns them into active participants.

5) Tell your author where to park. Please. I can’t be the only author in the world who finds the layout of schools and their associated parking lots bewildering.

More tips to come later….

So Why Do You Write for Kids?

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Oct 23, 2015 in Childhood, Children's Literature | 0 comments

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.”

Books that Break the Rules

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Dec 17, 2014 in Children's Literature, Editing | 0 comments

I was an editor before I was a writer (still am, in fact), and I can tell you there are certain things you look for in a manuscript when you first pick it up, a sort of mental checklist before you can even begin deciding whether or not it’s a fit for your list and something your company could publish successfully. Will it fit in a recognized format? Does it have a protagonist of the right age? Does the main character grow and change as the book progresses? Does it preach an irritating and stuffy moral? Stuff like that.

It is surprising, then, when I’m reading the classics to my daughter, to find how many of them violate these rules. Like these:

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: Can’t be beat for sheer transgressive fun and sly humor and a dead-on perception of the trials of childhood (like being FORCED to be Joseph in the Christmas pageant just because your father is the minister). Violates the rules by having a protagonist who is barely developed, doesn’t even get a name (!), and essentially exists as a set of eyes through which to see the action.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The ultimate wish-fulfillment book, as tasty to read as a chocolate bar is to eat. Violates the rules by having a passive protagonist who does nothing to earn his good fortune—who, in fact, earns his good fortune BY doing nothing.

Stuart Little: There’s something just so oddly satisfying about this book, although I have trouble putting my finger on it. Is it the sharp perception of the experience of being tiny in a giant world, perhaps? Violates the rules by not wrapping up plot threads once they have been started. (Did Stuart ever find Margalo? Did he ever see Miss Ames again?) And the car that goes invisible, too. That part’s just silly, E.B.

And yet, they’re marvelous books. I enjoying reading them as much as my girl loves hearing them. So is the moral that geniuses (genii?) can break the rules, or that the rules are silly?

Doing Something

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Dec 5, 2014 in Children's Literature, Educators & Librarians, Race | 0 comments

A moment in the library at Ferguson, Missouri.

If you’re like me, you’ve been deeply sad and angry about the things that have been and are happening in Ferguson, and all the things in our country that we now refer to just by saying the name of a neighborhood. And you feel frustrated and helpless, too, and wish here was something you could do.

I can think of four things.

1) Take a deep breath and admit that racial bias is real, and that it hurts people daily.

2) If someone of color says that he or she has experienced racial bias, believe it. They are the experts. They know.

3) Try to read, write and publish more books that feature children of color. If we are going to see each other as real people, and not caricatures built of fear, we need to start young.

4) Donate some money to the Ferguson Library. This small library has stayed open when schools and other public services shut down. They are trying to buy “healing kits” for the kids in the community, to help them deal with the traumatic events all around them. If there is every a community that needs a safe, calm place where minds and hearts can meet (is there ever a community that doesn’t?), Ferguson is it.

More about the library here.